Are teachers and pupils interpretation of poetry what the poet intended?
I think we can guess about the meaning of poems, and it certainly helps to understand about the context in which they were written. But ultimately, interpretation will always be personal. I will give you one example. I wrote a poem called Invisible, and received a letter from someone saying how helpful it was to convey how people with leprosy feel. Now, clearly that was not what I had in mind when I wrote it, but that is the magic of poetry. By tapping into the undercurrents of human experience, we meet in a shared stream of thoughts and feelings.