Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

[NorthSouthEast]

This is a sobering, thoughtful, harrowing, blood-boiling read. What Kate Clanchy went through 😡. I’ve put this in FWR as it’s yet another story of a woman being cancelled on the basis of rumour, supposition and hearsay with self-righteous people scrambling to jump on the “be kind” wagon as it rolls another human being and their career into the mud.

Kate Clanchy: I was cancelled. It made me contemplate suicide

www.thetimes.com/article/7681d5ec-3773-4b36-ab95-e4ab409d7899?shareToken=e76def471fd13ded750d7295fd554675

Have you read the book?

its quite boring to have to repeat this again and again, but basically - don’t write about children using the kind of detail you’d find in a eugenics textbook, or shame them for being ‘not pretty’ or losing their looks after being raped, or tell them that ‘English people, white people’ think they all look the same, etc etc etc etc

Your comment is nonsense

No. I don’t need to in order to support the principle. And I certainly don’t need to to know that comparing Kate Clanchy to Jimmy Savile is foul.

I work in publishing. The actions of her publisher were cowardly in the extreme. Don’t like an author’s words? Don’t publish them. But if you do publish them you support your author.

Have you read her book @musicismyboyfriend?

I didn’t lol

Ah - so you haven’t read her book. Thanks for confirming.

I have read vast swathes of it through various media sources. Even the parts read out to her by the producer on the podcast were disgusting, and hearing her try to justify the language used and bat back all criticism was appalling. I had never heard of the story until the new bbc podcast and I am amazed that people think it rehabilitates her.

Neither did you! And you work in publishing? How did you miss what seems to be the biggest story of the last 5 years?

I wasn’t talking to you.

What on earth makes you think I missed this? I watched it play out at the time.

I don’t have to have read a book to know about it and know what happened.

And the difference is you’re slagging off an author and a book you haven’t read. I’m supporting an author to write her own words and not be thrown under the bus by her cowardly publisher.

So you haven’t read it but you think that gives you the right to play judge, jury and hangman.

It doesn’t.

Nope

Yes it does

Grow up.

Thanks for replying to my post, but could you answer my questions?

Has she even had any teacher training? Nope

It would take you about 30 seconds to discover that this statement is untrue. She trained as a teacher in the 1980s and her memoir was about her 30+ years of teaching.

‘So many of our children had a loss to mourn. Isn’t that what poetry’s for?’ | Kate Clanchy | The Guardian

Sadly I cannot get the archive link to open. I dont subscribe to the Times, so cannot access the other. Is the shared link limited?

Really interesting podcast/ documentary. I felt most alienated from the episode about the publisher. How about employing better editors, and giving them more power, and then standing by your publication?

Bevause I did feel shocked at some of what I heard being read out from the book. It seemed to me that it desperately needed a highly involved edit, if it was going to be published at all. I was also a bit WTF at the Orwell prize committee.

I didn’t think the social media accuser came across at all well, and I thought the idea that Clanchy was adding fuel to the fire was pure victim blaming. I felt for her, she sounded broken, but also unseeing. It all certainly reinforced my experience that the world of publishing is like a secondary school playground except the acid tongues soray real acid.

What the Orwell Prize judges said about her book:

“In this book, a brilliantly honest writer tackles a subject that ties so many people up in knots – education and how it is inexorably dominated by class. Yet this is the very opposite of a worthy lecture: Clanchy’s reflections on teaching and the stories of her students are moving, funny, full of love and offer sparkling insights into modern British society.”

I am going to read the book. Because it seems to me that the book is more than just odd snippets taken out of context. I don’t know if I’ll like it or not. But I feel that I owe Kate more than just discussing the theoretics of it on MN.

I actually read this book before all the furore because I thought it sounded interesting. What comes through is her commitment to these children and her determination that their voices should be heard. At no point did I feel she dehumanised them, rather the opposite in fact. Yes , occasionally there are bits which make you feel a bit uncomfortable, but since when was it the job of a writer to make the reader feel comfortable all the time?

I feel that certain elements of society have become totally incapable of seeing the bigger picture or understanding broader intentions.

They cannot see this commitment.

They just go off on one based on a word they don't like, like pavlov's dog. All broader context and common sense go out the window.

Well her training is clearly out of date or she has wantonly gone against its principles, as she detailed in her book. You cannot pursue a child (vulnerable or otherwise) over and over again, going against the authority of a child’s key worker/main responsible adult, just to get them to write a poem about their trauma. Or is that ok to you? Does that genuinely seem like a safe thing to do in your eyes?

It’s not just ‘a word they don’t like’ - that is a reductive and patronising take.

Certainly sounds like it to me. The children themselves were very happy with the output by all accounts.