Poetry please

SIR – The Duchess of Cornwall is right: it is useful to learn poems (report, September 29).

When I was at primary school, I struggled with reading until in one lesson we were each given a poem and told we would have to read it the following day. When the moment came, my teacher was amazed and delighted as I reeled it off, my finger dutifully following the lines.

I never had trouble reading again.

Devizes, Wiltshire

SIR – Well done to the Duchess of Cornwall for stressing the importance and pleasure of learning poetry by heart.

I copy what Jackie Kennedy did with her children when they were small. Twice a year my three young granddaughters come to me, bringing special notebooks. They each choose a poem, copy it in their best handwriting and illustrate or decorate it. They then gift-wrap the notebooks and give them to their mother as birthday or Christmas presents.

Result: poems are read and sometimes memorised, handwriting improves – and their mother is delighted with her unique gifts.

Fulbourn, Cambridgeshire