How delighted I was yesterday to pick up these two Mitchell collections from an Oxfam shop.

Even more so to find Old Age Report in the collection Ride the Nightmare,

I used to read/share/teach this poem with students a lifetime ago. It was anthologised in a book I can’t remember, probably themed around Age, but I am not sure. What I do recall is the large number of anthologies or themed English subject collections where poetry was such a feature: excellent, varied poems for reading. Yes, just for reading. There were working/writing suggestions based on these, many creative, if you wanted to use, but it was genuinely a rich time of educational publishing that first and foremost featured literature to read and share and teach for pleasure. I’m talking early ’80s, so books of that time and obviously the 70s. And of course, poets like Adrian Mitchell had made poetry fun and accessible and also meaningful across a wide range of themes, not least war and poverty, to name two enduring ones….