Kate Clanchy - poet - is 'cancelled' by her publisher

“I have included nobody, teacher or pupil, about whom I could not write with love.”

I re-reading the intro. It’s very clear she knew what sort of book she was writing, how it could be perceived and she outlines her perspective well.

“it is me, not the children, learning the lessons here. I am in each story, clearly delineated, so that you will know what sort of person is doing the listening and filtering, and, I hope, be able to put my views aside and see the kids more clearly. I want to show you us, children and teacher, ‘Kids’ and ‘Miss’, both in groups, as if in a long school corridor, and then close in, so you can see the stuff we have brought with us from home, so you can hear some of the things we say.”

I think she’s absolutely explicit in acknowledging that she brings a perspective shaped by being a white ‘Miss’ in a position of power. She even asks the reader to put her prejudice aside if they see it.

I think she was misguided - -allowed emotion to take over - by challenging the Goodreads reviews. But most of what has transpired since is not at her door personally. She (perhaps, arguably) could have mitigated it sooner/better/not fuelled the flames -but I absolutely cannot condemn her. I do think an awful lot of people on both sides of this debate haven’t actually read what she wrote as a whole work.

I quoted bits of Ulysses competently and constructed an argument to write an essay to get a grade at 20. But I understood fuck all about what James Joyce was doing when he wrote it.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and this whole shitshow illustrates it.

If the children were composites or disguised in other ways, I think the complaint that she's being mean or failing in duty of care is completely unfounded and ridiculous. Are we really saying that writers can't describe people and things they observe without being "nice"?

I read the book and thought it was inspiring when I read it - and deeply humane. I didn't notice the descriptions at the time but looking back it seemed to me that it was part of Clanchy's writing technique to show the children as 'other' as seen through the eyes of the white middle class woman she is at pains to make clear that she is. But then in all cases she upends these expectations by showing how talented, thoughtful and creative her pupils are. I don't know why she didn't defend her writing on this basis but maybe there was no point if no nuanced discussion was possible.

There's also a wee bit of a difference about being acidic in a school report to be read by a pupil and their parents and being acidic about more or less identifiable pupils in a high-profile book that you can get your mates to review in the broadsheets for your own personal profit.

I'd dearly like to bring back the acidic teacher remarks.

What good would that do? Why foster resentment in children and young people? Teaching isn't about bringing kids down a few pegs; it's about treating them like human beings so they feel valued and can thus reach their potential.

Article in Guardian about Kate Clanchy

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/the-hounding-of-kate-clanchy-has-been-a-witch-hunt-without-mercy?

I'd dearly like to bring back the acidic teacher remarks.

Hopefully, the anthology* due in March can still find an audience, even if it is self-published or released online.
*Friend: Poems by Young People
Clanchy talks about her ostracisation here:
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/society-and-culture/ostracised-disinvited-rescinded-what-its-like-to-get-cancelled
I bought the memoir on the back of the Guardian excerpt the pp posted. I was surprised at the tone - it came across as patronising - have you started reading it yet OP?

I agree xxyzz - I’m just pointing out that the accusations existed even prior to the furore, and it is a bit of a dubious area which has led to the ‘white saviour’ stuff.

Fwiw, when I read the book - which I thought was brilliant and insightful and fascinating in many ways - I did go ‘gosh, surprised she’s said/written that/been allowed to put that’ in a lot of places. But I found it brave rather than offensive, in that it’s increasingly unusual to read something that discusses things how they are, not how we wish they were. She seemed quite clear-sighted in her opinions. I did find it a bit old-fashioned in tone sometimes but I mostly thought about my parents, who were teachers, and would have agreed or empathised with a lot of the things she pointed out so clearly. The book makes it clear the children referred to are composites and on that basis I found a lot of the more ‘imagine if that was your child she’s talking about’ dramatic responses on Twitter to be overblown. But people respond to their own triggers and I understand that.

I’m happy to take on board that I’m probably one of the white middle-class who didn’t see the issues - or if I saw them didn’t adequately register them as problematic. And people were upset by her words/attitudes and that’s not OK. I like to think that if I’d been editing it my ‘wow, gosh, really?’ would have translated to asking pertinent questions in the edit but perhaps not. We’re none so blind as those that cannot see.

I feel deeply sorry for her. I think Picador have fucked up enormously all round on this. She handled it poorly too, but I think the communication from the publisher was the absolute worst. As you say, her parents died, she’s been coping with grief and then this. I’m still sure that anthology will go ahead with another publisher.

(Btw, rights have reverted immediately so Picador won’t be earning anything on sales from now. She tweeted as much yesterday when saying her books would all be withdrawn from Amazon with immediate effect. Books already in stock at shops etc will already have been accounted for in sales, but this new ‘publicity’ won’t make her or Picador any extra money.)

I like a lot of Clanchy's writing (and her students' writing). I've followed her on Twitter since long before this outrage. When she started tweeting that Goodreads reviewers were making up quotes to try and paint her as racist, I was horrified on her behalf.

And then people started posting photos from Clanchy's books, showing that these quotes weren't made up.

Clanchy did eventually apologise, but only after repeatedly lying and slandering her readers. As Vorpal says, Clanchy contacted the Goodreads reviewer's employer, claiming the reviewer had made these quotes up. Clanchy was the one who tried to 'cancel' someone. If that's come back round to bite her, so be it.

Everyone’s cancelling these women, yet the BBC proudly display works of rapist Eric Gill. Why can’t they cancel rapists first?

I first came across Kate Clanchy from a retweet by Joanna Harris about how ‘horrid it was to get negative reviews telling lies about you.’ (Paraphrasing)

On looking at the original tweet she had screenshoted the review From Goodreads and was appalled that someone could make up the racist comments. So she knew from the start that the comments were racist, just didn’t think they were in her book. Clanchy went as far as contacted the reviews employer to complain.

Problem is the comments were there. Big names came in to support her and people, especially WOC, who pointed out they were there were attached, which continued for a long time.

Clanchy then changed tack, saying the comments were taken out of context, and finally that they couldn’t be racist as she wrote them.

It a classic example of:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.

Yes, she did eventually apologised but it took a long time.

I am not surprised the relationship with the publisher has become too difficult to continue. There were so many twists and turns that moving forward would be tricky. There were plans for the rewrite but I can see that could become very tense.

As far as I am concerned, anyone who looks at the problems faced by schools today and thinks poetry workshops are he answer is out of touch by definition.

Seriously?

@NoSquirrels

I can kind of see what you mean...but I don't think she comes across as though she promoted the kids to raise her own profile, although it's true it did have that effect.

And I think claims of her creating a 'brand' are very unfair - the chances she just' found' that many wonderful ready-made poets from diverse backgrounds is non-existent. She helped create that - she taught them, and clearly really, really well, and as a teacher myself, I can say that that's certainly not something that just any teacher could get from their students, or that they could produce unaided.

Why shouldn't she benefit from what was not only a showcase for her students' writing talents but also her teaching talents??

Also to add, not that it's strictly relevant, but I follow her on Twitter. Which is that the cancellation of Clanchy's work happened shortly after had lost both of her beloved parents to Covid. Which must be pretty devastating.

The pile-ons looked pretty inhuman.

Hopefully, if she's got any sense, she'll self-publish all her works as soon as the copyright reverts to her, particularly including he poetry book containing her students' work (with the money for that going to the students or a charity, preferably), and maybe include an updated version of the book in question, with its more 'controversial' lines taken out (or leave it, if understandably, she doesn't want more flak).

It's kind of annoying that with all this publicity about her work in the papers, her publishers are actually benefitting from it before they hand back the copyright!

I first came to Kate Clanchy because she posted the most, exquisite, sensitive, frankly incredible poems that her young students, mostly recent immigrants/refugees, had written, on Twitter. They absolutely blew me away, and it was clear from reading those that Clanchy was a very special teacher to bring out her students' poetry gifts like this.

This is also how I came to her first, and I share your sentiments.

However, I’ve also seen it argued (by other poets and literary folk) that this was some sort of grandstanding or profiting off her students, that the way in which the poems were always presented in typography etc made them part of ‘Brand Kate Clancy’ rather than celebrating the individuals themselves.

I don’t agree. But it was a view already rumbling out there pre her success with ‘Some Kids’. In fact, writing ‘Some Kids’ and its subsequent success was undoubtedly in part because of her Twitter following being so successful due to her sharing their work. Would she have had the deal to write the memoir that has now brought about this sad state of affairs without the Twitter feed and its huge success that was built on these pupils? It’s sort of an awful irony of the situation that her current plight was all driven by social-media furore in the end.

Just to add, after discovering Clanchy as what was clearly an incredible poetry teacher, I then read the book about her teaching experience (after it had won the Orwell prize but before anyone had 'noticed' the racism).

I didn't find the book racist, or ableist, or fattist. I'm Jewish and usually very sensitive to any hint of antisemitism in literature, but managed to not notice any here.

I think I was surprised it had won the award - but that's more down to what another poster described as its quite 1950s approach, it was definitely a book written by a white middle-class person for other white middle-class people, and presumed that the reader would not themselves have experience of being working class, or an immigrant, so she would need to explain it. Which as the child of refugees, felt kind of odd to me.

That said, what she was really writing about was the lessons she as a teacher and human being had learned about the class system and about structural racism in the UK. She couldn't have tackled those themes by not taking about the people impacted by them.

I think it is reasonable to argue whether a white middle-class person is the best person to make that point; maybe it would be better to get a member of an ethnic minority or a working class person to make those points themselves? But of course those books also exist, and it's had to criticise Kate Clanchy for that personally, given shehas dedicated her teaching career to amplifying the unheard voices of precisely those groups.

And one more point, albeit a minor one - I'm pretty sure she said the children she portrays are not only under different names but also in some cases composites. So I don't think it's as simple as one of the kids in it reading it and automatically thinking 'my teacher thinks I'm fat'. She will have taught thousands of kids at decades over multiple schools.

I first came to Kate Clanchy because she posted the most, exquisite, sensitive, frankly incredible poems that her young students, mostly recent immigrants/refugees, had written, on Twitter. They absolutely blew me away, and it was clear from reading those that Clanchy was a very special teacher to bring out her students' poetry gifts like this.

And it was clear that to learn how to create poems like this and then see them liked by hundreds of people on Twitter, sometimes more, and then published, must be life-changing for those students.

So it's not a surprise that so many of these same students have spoken up in her defence.

This also makes it particularly offensive, stupid, and yes, genuinely racist to cancel the publication of the poetry book that their poems were going to feature in, when they must have been so excited. :(

Talk about hypocrisy. What is really going to wound those kids? Their teacher describing the colour of a child's skin or eyes in a way that is a bit cliched but otherwise fairly accurate? Or losing their only chance to see their eyes in print and widely reviewed/read??

I mean, I can't quite picture writing about any of my students that way. But also, I am not a writer.

If I were going to write a book that was focused on what kinds of situations these kids were in, what poetry meant to them, where their lives were going, I think there probably isn't much point if you are going to pussyfoot it. Having worked with similar kinds of kids myself, lots of them are, like all of us, shaped deeply by their environment, and you can see that in the experiences they recount but also the way they speak, the kinds of lunches they bring ti school (or don't bring,) the way they dress. Anyone who says that there aren't class indicators that are readily apparent in some of these things, and which may correlate in some cases with poor outcomes is, as far as I can see, telling lies, to themselves if no one else.

The question of duty of care if she is still teaching these kids is a factor for sure, I'd have assumed something a publisher would be careful to have squared away but maybbe that didn't happen.