Cate Knight Poetry

 The Exam Factory - By C.Knight  "I'm tired of sweating facts and of crying bloody figures  or of bumping up exam results so egos can grow bigger.  I don't teach to reach a target set by someone far removed  and I don't need to teach a syllabus that someone else approved.  I teach because I give a damn  cos that's the kind of girl I am.  I care when kids are lost or low  with no one there nowhere to go.  I want to help them find a voice  to stand up straight and make a choice,  right one wrong one, live by it  and deal with all the adult shit  we throw at them and in their face.  Stealing childhood with no trace,  testing, besting, competing and beating  we even test them on what they've been eating.  Evaluate the second rate, teach it til it's stale.  'Write with chalk upon the slate..... Or else you'll bloody fail'"

  What will they sing when the music is gone? When the bands are all silent, the choirs have no song? What will they march to and how will they dance?  If the Arts are destroyed and not given a chance. How will the babies be lulled into rest? If creative is useless and won't pass the test.  What will we do with the royal Albert hall?  If musicians are made to feel worthless and small.  "Who really needs music? Eh?  What is it for?" This powerful language that can transcend war!  "It's nonsense and frippery, arty and trite!" But it's often the songs that have won us the fight. They're dismantling talent, eroding our worth Saying music and art has no place on this earth And in decades to come we will hear they were wrong As we struggle to live in a world without song. 

  The unconquerable mountain With a fervour we follow the hill path, That leads us up, up and away,  We climb with a vigorous focus To make higher inroads each day We pass every landmark and signpost Making notes on our journey's ascent Not stopping to look back behind us,  Still pushing, still not quite content When tiredness and fatigue pervades us,  We carry each other up hill Looking only upwards and onwards Ploughing sky high further still Each stile we cross fades in the distance, As our feet trudge this well trodden road Seeking summits of success unyielding  As we struggle to carry our load As we reach each peak new ones appearing Like targets set high in the sky That mean stopping is never an option, keep climbing, don't stop, you must try To reach the unconquerable summit And rest satisfied at its peak To fail is to say you are worthless To struggle to say you are weak So we march to where air is like gold dust Where our bodies are broken and bent...

 Educational Embers - By C.Knight  No money for stoking the fires of success,  no coinage to help the imbalance redress.  No budget for pencils or paper or ink  become an academy or you will sink  in the quagmire of failure that you have been set  to wade through and suffer or better still yet  be swamped by and flounder right from the start  so corporates and privates can tear you apart.  See who bids the highest for schools in despair  for those without funding it just isn't fair  but Gove keeps insisting and listing our sins  recycling policies, filling waste paper bins  with decades of reform, a thousand new hoops  another example of how low someone stoops  when moneys involved and the bidding is high.  The strongest grow stronger the weakest will die.  These havens of children that house such potential  in the face of a budget become non essential.  Will we stand up and fight as the ...