Tales From The Blue Stacks

The poet and playwright Francis Harvey, born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, has spent most of his life in County Donegal, where he has published an extraordinary range of poetry and served as a mentor for many other poets. This book serves as a tribute to him and his literary achievement. His admirers from Ireland and around the world have collaborated in a collection that includes paintings and photographs of the Donegal landscape about which he writes so movingly, personal essays and poems celebrating his poetry, and critical essays that explore Harvey’s major themes in greater depth. Although Harvey’s poems have received critical acclaim – his poem, ‘Heron’ won the 1989 Guardian and World Wildlife Fund Poetry Competition; he was the recipient of the Peterloo Poets Prize; and went on to be elected to the prestigious affiliation of Irish artists, Aosdána – this is the long overdue first book-length critical study of his work.

Pioneering and interdisciplinary in nature, this bibliography constitutes a comprehensive list of regional fiction for every county of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England over the past two centuries. In addition, other regions of a usually topographical or urban nature have been used, such as Birmingham and the Black Country; London; The Fens; the Brecklands; the Highlands; the Hebrides; or the Welsh border. Each entry lists the author, title, and date of first publication. The geographical coverage is encompassing and complete, from the Channel Islands to the Shetlands. An original introduction discusses such matters as definition, bibliographical method, popular readerships, trends in output, and the scholarly literature on regional fiction.

Educators want young people to grow up knowing that writing is an important and deeply satisfying life skill, one that helps them make more sense of themselves and their world, and one that helps them to communicate effectively. Sadly, too often writing becomes merely an exercise in ‘getting words right’, or writing to teacher-prescribed tasks. Developing Young Writers in the Classroom explores the principles of developing literacy through authorship, allowing children to describe, question and celebrate their own experiences and personal creativity. The book offers detailed guidance, supported by planning documents, poetry and prose, examples of children’s work and stimulating visuals. Inspiring topics explored include: creating a classroom environment which supports an independent writer students’ lives brought into the classroom finding significance in our experiences the use of memoir for recording experiences description in all kinds of writing choosing and writing about a character writing in all curriculum areas linking reading and writing using other authors as mentors and teachers collaborative learning. Illustrated throughout with accessible activities and ideas from literature and poetry, Developing Young Writers in the Classroom is an essential resource for all teachers wishing to inspire writing in the classroom.