‘Poetry is like mercury, it can do whatever it wants’: Interview with Matt Goodfellow

You’ve had an interesting career from aspiring musician, to teacher, to poet. Could you run us through your background?

Originally, the dream was to be a rock star. I started playing in bands when I was 13, started writing songs and carried on doing that through school, college and university. I’d always studied English because I was at decent at it and Carol Ann Duffy was my poetry tutor at Manchester Met, but I wasn’t interested in any of that as I just wanted to be a rock star. When I reached the age of 23, I came to the conclusion that actually, I didn’t have any musical talent.

The band split up and me and one of the other lads went on to be teachers, and I really enjoyed it. But I assumed all the creative stuff was gone. However, I started making poems and songs with the kids to perform in assembly. We started getting different poets and authors into the school and it got me interested in children’s literature. I didn’t know anything, I didn’t even know who Michael Rosen was. But I thought I could do that. Originally, I started writing for my own children and the children I taught, and it went from there.

So did you have any sense growing up that you wanted to do something literary?

I knew that I was good at writing, I could just do reading and writing in a way that I couldn’t for maths and science. But really, I had no encouragement to write. My behaviour was seen as a problem at high school, I had undiagnosed ADHD and quite a traumatic childhood. So nobody really spotted that I had something to say. I had to spot it myself really through the songs. I had to discover that myself.

What was it like teaching at a primary school and what impact did it have on you?

I was a Year 6 teacher for most of my career, and it’s a really exciting year group. The young people in your care are on the cusp of moving to high school and becoming young adults. So it’s a privilege to be there and hopefully be some sort of positive influence, which is why I ended up wanting to write something with a Year 6 teacher in there. It was brilliant whilst I was there, and it gave me a lot of experiences to write about. It gave me the ability to write in an authentic voice for young people. But it’s a very, very difficult job.

You’re no longer a teacher, but you still visit schools to show children how to write poetry. How do you think children benefit from being able to express themselves in this way?

I believe poetry is the best way for kids to express themselves creatively. Because of our education system, most young people, for generation upon generation, have left school at 16 disenfranchised by poetry, thinking that it offers them nothing. They then take this view of poetry into their adult lives. So my job in the classroom is to show the adults, as well as the kids, that poetry is like mercury, it can do whatever it wants, and that poets can come from anywhere in the world, they can have every different skin colour and every different accent. And that one of the greatest things they could do is to just express themselves.

Can you tell us about the book, The Final Year?

It’s about a kid called Nate as he moves from Year 5 to Year 6. There’s a lot of love in his life, but there are also a lot of problems. He’s the eldest of three brothers and his mum has had a lot of traumatic stuff happen in her life, which gives her a parenting style that some might find inappropriate. But she does the best that she can, and she loves her boys. Nate is a combination of my life, lives that I’ve seen as a teacher and stuff I’ve made up.

What can you tell us about the significance of that time [Year 6] in a child’s life, and why you decided to focus on it in your book?

Year 6 is a very strange year group, because of the way the English education system is set up, we get these ridiculous exams that all primary schools are judged on. So it becomes this pressure cooker almost, when this time should be about creativity and play, and learning who we are as people. I wanted to write about that in a way that young people and teachers could recognise. So I allow my teacher, Mr. Joshua, to criticise the education system and I wanted to put my characters into that high pressure situation at this really important time in life when they are discovering who they are. I wanted Nate’s difficulties to be recognised by his teacher, because mine weren’t.

And what do you hope young people reading this book will take away from it?

I wanted lives like Nate’s to be seen and heard, so a young person reading that sees themselves in this book will know that they’re not alone. I want them to know that their lives matter, the things that have happened in their lives matter, their cultural heritage matters, and their voice matters. That life is difficult, but that there is always hope.

You can learn more about Matt and his works here.

ALCS is proud to sponsor the CLiPPA, you can learn more about the award here.