An Education Between the Lines: A Poet & Illustrator's Contextualisation of Her Work

Coe, M (2025) An Education Between the Lines: A Poet & Illustrator's Contextualisation of Her Work. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

This is an autoethnographic PhD through the published work of author and educator, Mandy Coe. It focuses on a portfolio of poems and illustrations (for adults and children) drawn from Coe’s 30-year publishing history, which includes poetry collections, anthologies and work broadcast on television and radio.
Coe’s route into writing included periods of manual work, experiences of community arts and political activism within movements such as the Miners’ Strike (1984-5) and Greenham Common (1981-2000). This thesis chronicles how these lived experiences influenced her writing and practice-led pedagogy advocating creative routes into literacy, primarily within the inner cities of North West England).
Through reflection and academic research, her findings are presented as a dialogue with the theoretical perspectives of thinkers such as bell hooks, Ken Robinson, Paulo Freire, Gaston Bachelard and Roland Barthes. In resonating with, and building on, the works of these established theorists, Coe’s thesis opens a debate on how politics influences our access to education — and how education shapes our lives. In contextualising her illustration, writing and educational work, Coe critically explores the power of art and poetry to express critical thinking, support lifelong learning and foster a sense of agency — all critical factors when retaining social cohesion, especially in increasingly post-factual and politically polarised times2
This PhD, in contributing original knowledge to theories of creativity within education, seeks to inform and encourage writers, artists and educators. The reflexive nature of autoethnography reveals the contextual roots of Coe’s career as a practice-led practitioner/experimentalist. This ensures her findings can resonate with researchers and practitioners not only within the arts and education, but within the humanities and social sciences.
2 JSTOR, The Humanities as a Compass: Navigating a Post-Truth Era, Papadouris, M. https://about.jstor.org/blog/the-humanities-as-a-compass-navigating-a-post-truth-era/
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A recipient of two fellowships, Coe is widely published, and her work has won several literature awards.3 Her poems are critically recognised for their complexity combined with accessibility.4 Coe is a visual thinker, and this thesis considers the importance of visual literacy 5 and the crossover between image and language, as demonstrated by her illustrations and graphic novel Red Shoes (1997).
In referencing theorists of reader-response criticism such as Louise Rosenblatt, it highlights the transformative agency of readers when they are acknowledged as the co-creators of a poem. Coe argues that the creative invitation inherent within poetry and the visual arts enhances dialogic teaching and presents accessible and invaluable opportunities for creative risk-taking, especially important for children. Coe has led several campaigns to promote the genre of poetry for children and, in arguing for this, she chronicles the rewards of writing poetry for children, a genre undervalued by critics and under researched by academia.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	children’s poetry,; poets-in-schools; autoethnography; critical thinking; Liverpool; children’s literature; political art; literacy advocacy; heutagogy; Freire; dialogic; creative risk taking; reader-response criticism; Greenham Common; visual thinking; graphic novels
Subjects:	N Fine Arts > NC Drawing Design Illustration
Divisions:	Screen School
Date of acceptance:	2 June 2025
Date of first compliant Open Access:	30 June 2025
Date Deposited:	30 Jun 2025 16:09
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2025 16:09
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00026558
Supervisors:	Hammond, C, Maclennan, S, McLain, M and Roberts, E
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/26558

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