A few weeks ago I gave what has become an annual lecture at the University of Leeds where I talk to about seventy graduates, who are training to be English teachers in high schools. I was never an English teacher myself as such, [spending much of my career working with children with learning and behaviour difficulties] and I always feel a pressure about giving this talk which I don’t normally experience when I’m working in schools, performing or hosting literary events.

And yet what is it I’m trying to do in this lecture? I suppose I’m trying to give them a flavour of my professional writing life, and to talk about what I do with pupils in schools to help them develop confidence in their writing skills, and to learn some useful techniques in a variety of genres, from poetry to journalism.

The students at the university turned out to be, as always, a lovely bunch who good-humouredly had a go at the writing and performance exercises I gave them, whether it was writing a poem about a plastic decoy crow [pictured] or working as a team to bring a poem to life, from a small collection I had given them. These little performances of Spike Milligan and Stevie Smith poems were remarkable. I was utterly blown away by several groups choosing to do my poem, male bonding from Coma Songs, and was genuinely astonished, and humbled, by what they found in the poem to illuminate.

The following week I met one of the students I had lectured several years ago at the university working in a Halifax School, who told me how she had tried out some of my ideas in the classroom and how well they seemed to have worked. Phew, that’s a relief!!