Most of us spent many years of our lives in school, and since school is the place that most of us learn about poetry, then there’s an easy association between poetry and school. However, some take the connection between school and poetry one step further, and are inspired to write poetry about school.

The memories of our first day at school may dim with time, but the best poets capture them in such a way that we can experience them anew. Roger McGough does just this in the aptly titled “First Day School:”

McGough’s delightful and humorous verse is filled with a child’s sensations – sometimes overwhelming – upon experiencing for the first time not just the experience of school itself, but of the very physical effects of that first day.

Henry Lawson’s (1867-1922) memories of school may be those of an era now far past, but his experience is uncannily similar to that of schoolchildren of any age, as recounted in “The Old Bark School:”

Lawson’s school may have been primitive compared to most modern schools, but his retelling of it will strike a chord with many.

Not all schools are brick and mortar, or in Lawson’s case, bark and calico. School is sometimes a state of mind, one that Henry Van Dyke (1852 – 1933) explains well in “Two Schools:”

Van Dyke celebrates the learning that comes from the school of experience, the school of the world around us, proving that all education is not gained the schoolroom.