The Works 3 : A Poet for Every Week of the Year

by Paul Cookson

The Works 3 contains poems by 52 poets - one for every single week of the year. There are seven poems by each poet, which gives a fantastic variety to the book. All the major themes and forms of poetry are to be found within this chunky paperback and there is a biography of each poet at the beginning of their week. Another essential book for teachers but also a joyful celebration of the best poets of all time both classic and contemporary. Tennyson, Wordsworth and Shakespeare rub shoulders with Brian Moses, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. A must-have book.

Genres: Poetry

576 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2004

Reviews

[Becky Sparkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great for use in school or to send home with children to get them interested in poetry. It contains a poem a day and each week has a different author. This ensures the children get a variety of poetry and get to see how different authors write and the different styles of poems.

[Gemma Key · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetry is seen as a difficult topic to fit into teaching sometimes, getting children to appreciate and understand the meaning and themes of poems cannot be achieved by occasionally picking them up and reading through one or two. This is where 'The Works 3' comes to the fore, a single book containing a poet for every week of the year. This can be introduced as part of a literacy programme, either teaching a single poem a week or even several.

The book offers such a variety that the poets and poems can be selected to fit with other topics currently being taught across other lessons. Be it plant and animal life in science, or a period of history, the book has a poem to fit. I think this is critical to the effective use of this book; if the poems chosen match an existing knowledge base, then the children will already be aware of the background to the poem. This allows a deeper focus on the purpose of the poem, its meaning and the lessons which can be taken from it. The other advantage of the book is it is not a single poet, the different poets provides a variety of styles and lengths of poem to ensure that over an entire year, there is a poem everyone will have enjoyed.

Finally I think there is a lot to be said for including more poetry in a programme of lessons. By using a new poem every week, rather than a several poems in a short space of time; the children will learn significantly more, without the rest of their literacy knowledge suffering. This book is a fantastic basis for this.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is aimed at school children and whilst there is a decent amount of classic poetry by the famous poets you'd expect, there is a good deal of other poetry, much of it about being at school and various school experiences and I found those to be hit & miss.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read with a variety of poems.
Must buy for trainee teachers.