Last week, several people tagged me on social media, alerting me to a phrase that the writer and poet — and my former teacher — Kate Clanchy had used in her memoir Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, which was published two years ago. In the book, she describes one of her pupils as having “almond-shaped eyes”.
Critics labelled this description patronising, insulting, offensive, colonialist and racist. This upset me. I am that girl with the almond eyes. I did not find it offensive.
To be clear, I would not dream of commenting on whether other words and phrases Kate has used are offensive to others, but “almond eyes” is a term that I have often used in my own poems.