Answerlands is a teacher's rhapsody, written out of anguish at the state of schools, the pressures of being in them and hallucinations brought on by the prolonged collision of errant imagination and disciplined reality. It's an attempt to dream about how true contact in education might be possible, both intra- and interpersonally.
Joseph Minden is a poet and schoolteacher. His first collection, Poppy (Carcanet, 2022), was a poetry Book of the Year in The Daily Telegraph and History Today, recommended by the LRB Bookshop, and highly commended in The Forward Prizes.