Another Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, that we did at school, was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Our English teacher always put so much into everything she read to us and even today when I read that poem I find that I'm saying it in exactly the same way she did!

I used to learn a lot of the poetry we did off by heart and then I'd go home from school and recite them to my mother with the same feeling that they'd been recited to us.

My mother was also a great lover of poetry and as children she was always reciting poems to us. I'm sure that this had a very positive effect on me.