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Selected Reviews
A Work With Feeling. By Don Blankenship, Amazon Top 100 Reviewer, 5 stars
"Free verse has become a universal mode for expressing thoughts, feelings, reality and unreality for many. Some writers write very bad verse (I find myself in this category), while others have mastered its form and are able to use it as a sharp tool, a soft pillow for pleasing landings and most importantly, sharing the many little pieces of their world with others. Helena Harper is quite obviously one of those with the skill and the feelings to accomplish the last mentioned...
Now I judge poetry, in any form, by a few simple standards. First, is the author conveying her or his true feelings about and for the subject being addressed? Secondly, does the subject touch me; can I relate to what the author is trying to tell me? Thirdly, does the author use metaphors and similes that are realistic?...
Fortunately for me, and for all of us, Ms Harper has fulfilled each of my requirements and given us an understandable work that most of us can perfectly relate to, even if all of us are not in the teaching profession. I have to admit that without exception I enjoyed each of the twenty offerings in this wonderful little book...
This is a wonderful collection of poems that were written from the heart. This work would be an absolute wonderful gift for any teacher in your life; it would be a wonderful gift and read for anyone wishing to understand not only teachers, but all people who dedicate their lives to service. Love this small glimpse into a remarkable woman's life, and I do hope more is to follow."
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The Other Side of the Front Desk. By Grady Harp, Amazon Top 10 Reviewer, 4 stars
"Teachers are lauded by parents, former pupils, and have become icons of what just may be our diminishing educational system. But what Helena Harper manages to offer in this brief but highly readable and refreshing collection of poems is the teacher's vantage at work. From her experiences as a teacher in a Girls' Private School she presents many warmly humorous anecdotes about pupils, parents, the trials of being an educator and a disciplinarian simultaneously, and in the most entertaining poems in the book Harper shares the private lives of a those whose 'day job' extends into every facet of their being.
Harper writes with disarming clarity, poems unfettered by constraints of rhyme or meter, but instead allows her thoughts and reactions to many many aspects of education to flow like a private conversation. Of particular interest is the inclusion of the many non-teacher personnel in a private girls' school - the caretaker, the cook, the matron - giving the reader not only entertainment but insights into some of the differences between public and private education.
This is a fine book for teachers, for parents, and for students who strive to make sense out of the idiosyncrasies of that person in front of the white/black board in the world of the classroom. Highly entertaining, well-written poetry. "
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A Teacher's Life in Poetry. By Robin Friedman, Amazon Top 50 Reviewer, 4 stars
"It's a Teacher's Life! is a short, elegant and whimsical collection that explores in poetry a year in the life of a teacher at a private school for girls in England. The language and experiences are British indeed, but the author's feelings, frustrations, and hopes touch on the universal.
The little book consists of twenty poems and eighty pages together with several small sketches which illustrate the themes of the poetry. The sketches add much to the book...For all the whimsy and lightness, Harper is at her best in her reflections of her role as a teacher and its significance...In a poem called "The Lessons" describing the difficulty of classroom teaching, Harper... concludes with a meditative passage: "that's the reward /for hours and hours of work /and patience,/ a reward of infinite measure,/ a priceless, unlimited treasure." ........
As a final example, at the conclusion of a poem called "The Exams", the students complete their work, the docents receive the exam books, and Harper reflects on the process: "The teachers follow, /and silence reigns once more,/ broken only by / the great illusion of time, /ticking indefatigably/ in the phantom human mime."
In a short, light way, Harper's book explores the frustrations of the teacher's life. Through the short-term difficulty and travail, she captures something of its significance as well. This is a delightful little book."
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Light-Hearted Insider's View of Teaching. By Kenneth Rice, 4 stars
"Helena Harper writes from firsthand experience about teaching in England and does so in a delightful, light-hearted manner. I breezed through the book and its flowing verses while gaining greater appreciation for the work teachers do. The book doesn't glorify teachers but portrays them as regular people, trying to do a good job in trying circumstances."
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Wonderful insights. By Dallas D'angelo-gary “aka: Simon Bookmonger”, 5 stars
"Helena gives us a fresh insight into what it's like to be a teacher. The approach is sometimes serious, sometimes whimsical, always delightful. I could almost smell the wood from the building, and hear the excited chattering between classes. I could also feel the rush of the hectic lives of teachers. This is a tasteful and delightful collection of poems."
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Humour and truthfulness about school life. By ex-teacher-trainer, 5 stars
"The one thing we all have in common is experience as a school pupil. Private or state, prep or primary, boarding or day school, experiences of classrooms and teachers, of playgrounds and sports fields, parental evenings and speech days share many common features. Helen Harper's poems are set against the background of a girls' private school, but the situations they evoke are, if not universal, certainly of general interest. She brings an experienced teacher's viewpoint to all the aspects of school life. If we ever wondered from the back row of the class what the teacher actually thought, now we know.
Her language is clear, direct, readable and involving. She has a sense of humour and her point of view is sympathetic, but clear-sighted and not afraid to be gently critical. Her opening poem, "The School Ethos", quietly but devastatingly destroys the cliché of the `caring environment'. The `fear/of alienating parents' is truer of the private sector rather than state schools, but the hollowness of educational cliché is everywhere the same. The staffroom, the classroom, practical jokes, they are all recreated by the author's pen; as are school trips and prize day. Somehow all the goings-on of the school day and the school year are given a nostalgic gloss by the way language is used, so that what might have been merely prosaic is relived as poetic.
Both younger readers and adults can relive, experience and learn a lot from this highly enjoyable and beautifully written evocation of school life."
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The Inside Teaching Perspective for Everyone, By T. Turner “Tiffany Turner”, 5 stars
"I ordered this book on-line since I am a teacher myself. I was interested to see what a book of poetry on teaching would contain. I really found it to be a breath of fresh air in the hoopla of preparing for State Testing. Ms. Harper really gives the reader a teacher's perspective in a humorous fashion. You can really understand the everyday ups and downs a teacher goes through each day or week, and even during the school year.
It was wonderful to see that in the world of teaching, you're not alone in your dedication. I really enjoyed her variation of subjects relating to the field, such as "The Workplace", "The Trips" (Field Trips), "The Staffroom", and "The Duties". Her book has you travel through the school year, experiencing all of the trials a teacher faces. Many of my students were startled by my laughter during DEAR (Drop-Everything-And-Read) time, as I chuckled again and again.
For American readers, it may be a bit different from the school experiences in the States. The school setting is a girls school in England, and may describe school format and procedure different from American Schools. But it does make it interesting in the sense that you can learn what schools are like in other countries."
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Review in Summer 2009 edition of Attain magazine (a magazine for prep schools in the UK)
"Amy, the Able - school administrator and 'Queen of Resources' - and Emilio - 'caretaker unique' - are just two of the lifelike cast of characters assembled by Helena Harper in this enjoyable, witty and insightful trip down memory lane.
I hadn't read poetry since I skipped out of my A level English exams and didn't initially jump at the idea of reading a poetry book set in a girls' private school and written by a teacher. Would it be funny? Could it be, even? I wasn't aware of any of my teachers being poets and I wasn't sure that the everyday minutiae of school would make for Good Poetry, as defined by the narrow constraints of the A level curriculum.
I was in for a surprise and an enjoyable reintroduction to poetry...Helena Harper's poems have a warm, conversational style, almost as if the teacher's stream of consciousness were noted down as poetry...[and the author] has an incisive, dry wit that makes you want to read on..."
(Full review here http://www.attainmagazine.co.uk/ebooks/attain9/flash.html#/28/ )
