If you're keen on writing, a great way to learn is from a master. That's where the Writers in Schools scheme comes in, writes Louise Holden

People from all walks of life find their way into the transition-year classroom, whether they are barristers, businessmen, aid workers or architects. One group with a particularly strong tradition of working with students is writers. Since transition year began, in the 1970s, poets and novelists have been common sights in Irish classrooms. Perhaps they know the next generation of literary artists might have to be drawn out of their shells. Or perhaps they feel a little responsible for the hours that transition-year students will soon spend learning poetry for the Leaving Certificate.

"With all the technology and learning resources available to students now, there is still nothing to beat face-to-face interaction with the author of the work you are studying," says Niall McMonagle of Wesley College. McMonagle, a regular contributor to The Irish Times and Rattlebag, RTÉ Radio 1's arts show, has been bringing authors into his transition-year-English classroom for 25 years, including Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan, Eavan Boland and Brendan Kennelly.

"Some writers who come are very charismatic," he says. "Anthony Horowitz came in to talk to the pupils last week, and he was very engaging. However, it doesn't always take a song-and-dance routine to get the attention of the students. Sometimes very quiet people can really make a connection too."

McMonagle believes preparation is the key to bringing a writer into the classroom. He always ensures the school library has plenty of copies of the author's books and gets students to read at least an opening chapter before meeting the writer. There is never a problem getting students to participate, according to McMonagle. "I end up having to limit questions: the students are always very curious about the writing process, the time and money involved, writer's block and so on."

As a poetry critic as well as a teacher, McMonagle is well placed to contact writers and get the best from classroom sessions. But for teachers with fewer literary connections, Poetry Ireland offers plenty of help. Its Writers in Schools scheme, which is open to all schools, helps to pay for writers to visit primary and secondary schools throughout the Republic. In its seven years it has funded 2,200 visits, reaching 200,000 students. In 2002, its busiest year, writers made more than 400 visits, talking to 38,000 students. (Visits to schools in the North are directly funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.)

Writers willing to visit schools must have at least one book published by a nationally distributed publishing house or one work staged by a theatre company funded by the Arts Council. Scriptwriters and storytellers can also qualify.

Poetry Ireland's Writers in Schools database can help teachers find local writers. Larry Cotter of St Kieran's College in Kilkenny has been using it to arrange sessions for his transition-year group. The visits have been such as a success that last year he decided to take the process a step further and recruit a writer-in-residence for the school.

"Over the course of the year our writer-in-residence, Mark Roper, called in regularly to work with our team of student writers. At the end of the year we published a broadsheet of their work and held a recital for students, parents and local literary figures. It was a great success. The broadsheet sold out."

Roper, a poet who had already taught creative writing to adults, has signed up to the writer-in-residence scheme again this year. He says the school environment presented new and interesting challenges. "When I was teaching adults I was reacting to their questions and responding to their work. The students were different. I had to project more of myself to engage them with the process of writing. I had to stimulate their desire to write by using existing works to demonstrate what poetry can be. Once they started to write they were very forthcoming with their ideas."

The key skill for a writer is the ability to self-edit. Novices often make the mistake of clinging to material that should be rewritten or cast away. Helping students to assess their work more critically was Roper's main objective."When you first start out writing poetry it's tempting to be precious about what you write. If you feel that your words captured an emotion or sensation that cannot be repeated you are reluctant to start tampering with your first draft. What you learn over time is that that first draft rarely, if ever, survives. The real work of the poet lies in rewriting, rejecting, redrafting the work until you are happy that it is right."

Roper also worked with concepts of imagery, perspective, voice and rhythm - all the elements of a good Leaving Cert poetry commentary. He did not dwell on the nuts and bolts of academic critique, however: he was more interested in empowering the students to embrace poetry for themselves. Roper is keen to repeat the experience, as he found that, once the students got started, they took a fresh approach that he was able to learn from. "Often the work was quite startlingly original," he says.

Larry Cotter united the writing talent of the region this year with a new concept, the Writers in Schools Masterclass. Held in May, the masterclass was open to students and teachers from the south-east who had had writers-in-residence in their schools the previous year.

"On the day we had over 80 young writers in workshops with six writers: Paddy Bushe, Maeve Ingoldsby, Mark Roper, Billy Roche, Neville Thompson and John Sexton. Each student had an opportunity to meet other writers and to produce and perform their work in the course of the day. The project was hosted by the Kilkenny Education Centre in conjunction with Poetry Ireland, the south-east arts education advisory committee and group of teachers from Kilkenny. It was a great success, and we hope to develop this idea."

To find out more about the Writers in Schools and Writers in Residence schemes, contact Anna Boner at writersinschools@poetryireland.ie or 01-4758601. You can search the writers' database at www.poetry ireland.ie

Some wonderful poets fall victim to the blight of being listed on the Leaving Certificate curriculum. In the cauldron of theorems, graphs, French verbs and world wars, a poem can lose its magic and be relegated to the section of your brain reserved for things you can't wait to forget.

Last year thousands of students wondered if Patrick Kavanagh would make the cut on English paper 2. Whether they greeted the paper with delight or despair, there are those who will never forgive the Monaghan man.

Transition year is an ideal time to engage with poetry away from the torture of exam forecasting and learning lines by heart with the sick feeling that you'll never use them. Many students are travelling to Inniskeen to see for themselves the stony grey soil that Kavanagh both loved and abhorred.

The tour of Kavanagh's homeland is designed to bring to life the writings of the poet, using local landmarks, live performances and a bus tour.

My attitude to Kavanagh at school was one of resentment. If he was so ambivalent about his home town, why did I have to know about it? I have since learned that everyone has mixed feelings about their origins, and the Kavanagh tour programme invites students to examine their own roots and sense of place the way Kavanagh did as a young man.

"Poetry is about putting into words the bits and pieces of the everyday," says resident actor and Kavanagh guide Gene Carroll. "It's about that one time we pass an ordinary thing out of 1,000 times, but this time maybe the light hits it just so and makes us suddenly stop and catch our breath."

To walk along Inniskeen Road, as Kavanagh did, and to muse about the way he captured this everyday experience, may help to turn the stress of learning lines for the Leaving Cert into a more transcendent experience.

The Patrick Kavanagh Centre provides student visitors with plenty of preparatory notes for Leaving Cert ian effort to make the process easier.

More importantly, transition-year students get a chance to understand Kavanagh in the context of his art instead of the exam process. And don't think that all of that line learning is a waste of time. There's life after the Leaving, and I'm glad Kavanagh is still hard wired into my brain, to be called up on the canal bank without the need for a textbook.

A typical visit to Kavanagh country takes two and a half hours, including breaks, and comprises a guided tour, exhibition worksheets, notes on the poet and a live performance, A Little Drop Of Paddy. The transition-year programme, which is called A Sense of Place, costs €4 a student. You can get more information from the Kavanagh Centre (042-9378560, www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com).

Tipperary Institute is celebrating Kavanagh's life and work with a poetry competition for second-level students. The theme is My Place. The deadline for entries is Friday, October 22nd. E-mail infoatpkc@eircom.net for more information.