Kester Brewin

Category: Writing

  • Avoiding Burnout

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    I wrote a piece for The Guardian a few weeks back, looking at the (major) issue of teacher burnout. Strikes me that it could resonate more widely into other professions too…especially ‘pastoral’ ones.  Panic attacks, tears, anxiety and breakdown are sadly too common across the nation’s staff rooms, and as governments demand more and more…

  • Getting High – A Reader’s Guide

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    For those of you who have already begun the book, or are awaiting delivery, I thought it might be helpful to post a kind of field-guide to the text. That’s not to say — I hope — that it doesn’t stand alone, but for those who are interested in delving into some of the background…

  • Don’t Tread Softly (Though You Tread on My Dreams)

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    It’s always a strange time in the run up to a book being published. Mostly, there’s a sense of excitement. But there’s also a degree of nervousness. Will people ‘get it’? Will people think it’s any good? I was thinking about this the other day, and was reminded of Yeats’ poem The Cloths of Heaven:…

  • The Tyranny of Numbers | Obsessive Measurement | Demetrification

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    The novel manuscript I’ve been working on is based in a school (not the one I currently work in) and I’m planning to be posting some tangential thoughts on education and teaching over the coming months. One of the key issues I’ve been reflecting on is the problem of measurement. In a busy, economy-driven society,…

  • Life, Writing and Being Useless

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    (soundtrack to this post: ‘Wasting My Young Years‘ by London Grammar) Posts here have been a little thin on the ground, mostly due to the fact that I’ve been work very hard on the manuscript for a novel – more news of which I hope one day to be able to share, but I’ll shut…

  • Stillness Is Coming | National Poetry Day

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    My dear friend Nic died a year ago on Monday. Missed so much. This, on National Poetry Day, for him.   Stillness A year in has not stopped our yearning, this anno domini we know dominates; still, stillness is coming. Your stilling broke levees of such Orlean, Orwellian turbulence rising angry Leviathan against this awful…