The poem's first lines characterize this dramatic monologue's speaker: the stuffy old "Head of English" (that is, the head teacher of the English department) at a British girls' school. These lines also indirectly paint a picture of the environment in which such a Head is at home. Both the Head's pompous tone and the fact that this is a girls' school (and therefore, probably, an exclusive private school rather than a state school) invite readers to imagine the poem taking place in an old-fashioned wood-paneled assembly hall, where rows of girls in school uniforms sit in utter boredom, listening to the Head drone on.
Today, the Head begins, is a special occasion: "we have a poet in the class." Better still, this is a poet with "a published book"—an official poet, not just some hobbyist. The inkblots on the poet's fingers—stains which the Head points out as if they were markings on a songbird—are yet more evidence that this visitor is the real deal.
But all the Head's enthusiasm for this "real live poet" sounds distinctly condescending. Take a look at the repetition in the first two lines:
Today we have a poet in the class.
A real live poet with a published book.
That diacope on "poet"—and the intensifying "real live"—makes it sound as if the Head is being patronizing to both the visiting poet and the students, introducing the poet as if the poet were the tooth fairy: look, the tooth fairy! Yes, the real live tooth fairy, with her wings and her wand! A "poet," to this Head, is clearly a kind of stock character, identified by "inkstained fingers" and legitimized (barely) by a "published book"—no one to be taken too seriously.
This forced and condescending cheer about this poetic visitor gets even more pronounced when the Head remarks that the girls might be about to "witness verse hot from the press," and follows up that jolly cliché with an utterly unenthusiastic "Who knows."
Everything in this first little speech, in other words, reveals that the Head of English is pompous, small-minded—and probably not what you'd call a poetry-lover. And this, the poem will suggest, is an all-too-common irony in the world of education: the very people responsible for teaching poetry often have no love or feeling for their subject.
Note, too, that the poem never gives readers a picture of the Head; this person might be male or female, old or young (though they certainly sound on the old side). The Head's attitude, this intentional omission suggests, turns up in all kinds of teachers; readers might even imagine their own most pompous teacher in the Head's place.