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

do you think it's appropriate to speculate on the size of a student's erection, and whether it was big enough to justify a sexual assault survivor being triggered by it?

I know you asked Arabella, but for what is worth I thought this scene was interesting and - yes - provocative, but in an entirely deliberate way: because her point is that the power balance between teacher and pupil is entirely different from that between equals. The "speculation" isn't exactly speculation, it is another observer pointing out in a crude way that they are talking about a child - not only legally and emotionally but very obviously physically. And you know what, I think that is entirely relevant, unless you think a kid should be judged by the same standards as an adult.

I would be interested to know too.

I don't know why I keep coming back to this thread. Each time I'm staggered anew by the extent of the apologism.

She said "To most of us, you look the same to us". Most of us meaning white people.

And that was in response to the kid in question hauling her up on her previous assumption that he was from the same background as the other boy they’re discussing. That kid tells her ‘Miss, haven’t you noticed we’re not the same’ (or something like that). So he’s already addressed her racism in person. Then they have a conversation about his asylum case and background to that and - because she can’t fix anything for him, she’s powerless to offer any real comfort or help - she offers him a joke based on the thing they’ve just discussed. The thing he’s been comfortable picking her up on her inherent prejudice.

It’s not intended to be of real comfort. Because she can’t give that.
It’s intended to be an acknowledgment between two people of the unfairness of it all.

That’s what I took from that piece.

And honestly Arabella, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Clanchy's discussion of that student's penis since you've been dodging my questions on that - do you think it's appropriate to speculate on the size of a student's erection, and whether it was big enough to justify a sexual assault survivor being triggered by it?

Can you explain what you think is the different nuance and implications between saying a boy has an Ashkenazi nose and saying he has a Jewish nose?

African Jonathan and Cypriot bosoms have gone too.

I don't know that that's correct at all. I've already noted several instances of wry self depreciation

There are but they remind me of the comedy routines by Marcus Brigstock or Jack Whitehall on being ashamed of being middle class (not really)

Perhaps they weren’t. But we can’t assume anything on the boy’s part.

I’ll be rereading at some point with very wide open eyes to challenge myself to see the alternative viewpoints.

When I read the book I thought how honest it was - brutally honest sometimes, and often about herself. She doesn’t sanitise when she’s saying things that make you go ‘oof’ - she doesn’t pretend she liked every kid, every parent, every other teacher. I found that brave not awful. Because it seemed honest. People who work closely with other people - often challenging people - are not just endlessly kind, sympathetic and living. They get frustrated, challenged, irritated. And her work with these kids was honest too - she went to bat for them.

Like I say, I find the whole affair surrounding it difficult.

The comparison to Prince Phillip is in my edition also.

I think it's more pertinent how the comment would have felt to the boy than how it comes across to the reader, assuming it is true or at least true in broad strokes (and if it's not true I'm not sure why you'd make it up). Archness may work for a middle class readership but would not have been an appropriate response to that child in that moment.

I'm reading it now. She does not compare herself to Prince Philip. It's on Kindle and I've done a word search to make sure.

I have a paperback of the first edition text.

I think in removing the phrases like ‘Ashkenazi nose’, ‘Somali skull’ and so on, it’s perhaps made her intent even less clear.

I didn’t realise the text had already been altered, actually. When they announced a rewrite I thought it would be extremely hard to do. As far as I knew that hadn’t yet happened. It seems like this ‘don’t give offence edition’ is the worst of worlds.

["lets", obviously. Autocarrot apostrophe there.]

I've got to say I find this a very clumsy and insensitive attempt at comfort which may well have left the boy feeling worse than before he spoke to her - imagine being told by your teacher that all you lot look the same to her, and that you'd better pin your family's hopes on the racism of the immigration officials, and that's supposed to make you feel better. And there's no further self-reflection from Clanchy at all, she closes the story there, apparently under the impression she has been successful in this interaction.

Ha, this shows the limits of "objective" textual analysis. I read this as archly referencing the ubiquitous "black people look the same" trope, on the assumption that her readers would be culturally literate enough to know that it's a joke at her own expense - she is tacitly acknowledging her own powerlessness to help, and the racism which faces him. Of course it's not comforting in any practical sense, it's the meagre comfort of her trying to acknowledge some of what faces him. And she let's it hang because she doesn't think she needs to spell it out.

That's how I read it, anyway - and since I see that it can be argued your way too, I am inclined to think that some of her problems come from assuming that people would read her gaps and implications. She's a poet, isn't she? I wonder if it's because she's using a kind of open-ended, draw-your-own-conclusions form that people think she genuinely hasn't engaged with the implications of what she's said. She's being honest, and nuanced, and open about the imperfections of her own responses - without saying at every turn And This Is Bad, because she trusts the context and form to make that abundantly clear. And so if you take it out of context, or you're so alienated by her that you can't see what she's trying to do, it does read as much worse than it is. Given what she does explicitly say about what she's trying to do and write about, I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.

But not Clanchy's own racism or classism. She's always right, and presented as the voice of reason.

To some extent this is true. The title gives it away, in fact: she positions herself as having been taught, and so her voice, looking back, does have a wry I'm-so-much-wiser-now! tone. I'm not sure it's fair to fault her for that, since a memoir about what you've learnt which didn't assume it was worth learning would be pretty lame. Also there are two important qualifiers: the first one is that she absolutely does present her own past arrogance and prejudices. Here's the scene with Shakila where they're taking about terrorism, and she says:

I'm assuming the poem is a protest against suspicion of Muslims in Britain. I'm aware there is a group of Afghans in the neighbourhood now. [...] I got into a discussion with [one of them] about the poet Rumi. He looked just like Shakila, come to think of it, so maybe--

"No, Miss," says Shakila [...]. "In England? There are no terrorists in England."
"She's from Afghanistan," says Lily, "she means the Taliban." [...] I assume this is a white stereotype, and I am about to correct her when Shakila nods, more vehemently than ever."

This whole passage is about the knocking-down of several assumptions - the cringey shorthand of thinking the guy "looks like Shakila", the self-righteous arrogance of assuming it's a "white stereotype". Of course she sounds smug, but that is entirely the point - she is talking about growing in self-awareness through being confronted by someone else's story and honesty. There are other places where you get a similar dance of evolving stream-of-consciousness, but this is the one I remembered enough to look up.

And secondly, she is entirely explicit about not being perfect now. As none of us are. (I refer you to the bit I posted before about prejudice and poetry, can't be bothered to type it out again.)

And finally - no matter how much we personally warm or not to her style, and how inclined we are to forgive her residual prejudices, I think she is doing her best to talk about the problems facing us, which is more than most people do. And for trying to do her best, she has been disproportionately punished, very publically. What message does that send?

All references to "chocolate" have been removed in my edition.

Kimiko, I'm not sure to be honest, but I'd guess most if not all of the phrasing that was identified as offensive by readers has been removed or changed. Which as another commenter mentioned, presents an interesting problem, in that the book probably reads as less offensive now, but ultimately it's just been pasted over and the underlying problem hasn't really been addressed. So in that respect would it actually have been better to leave it in its original form so readers are better able to make an informed judgment about the content?

To go off on a bit of a tangent, thinking more about Clanchy's level of self-reflection in the books, I stand by my comment there's very little of it and she seldom engages in any introspection about her own attitudes, and generally her perspective is presented as the good and right one - or the "loving" one is a phrase she seems to use a lot, as though it excuses everything.

But there is one moment I remember that I guess comes close to some self-awareness, and it's another take on the whole "they all look the same to me" thing, but her respnse to her introspection on this just raises a whole pile of other problems in my opinion.

It's a story about a Somali boy whose family are seeking asylum in the UK. The family come from close to the Somali-Kenyan border, and another Somali boy in class has been teasing him by telling him he looks Kenyan. He is particularly upset by this because he worries if he is thought to be Kenyan, his family's asylum case will fail. Clanchy is baffled by what it means to look Kenyan as opposed to looking Somali - surely they both look the same? But then she looks again and realises the two boys do have different physiques and facial features (seems a little odd she'd never noticed this before since they've been in her class all year, but whatever). So she literally tells the boy that they all look the same to her but presents it as a form of comfort - that the same will likely be true of the immigration officials too.

I've got to say I find this a very clumsy and insensitive attempt at comfort which may well have left the boy feeling worse than before he spoke to her - imagine being told by your teacher that all you lot look the same to her, and that you'd better pin your family's hopes on the racism of the immigration officials, and that's supposed to make you feel better. And there's no further self-reflection from Clanchy at all, she closes the story there, apparently under the impression she has been successful in this interaction.

And that's genuinely the only moment that even comes close to self-reflection that I can think of.