Children’s Poet and Educator – Children's Poetry Summit

Brian Moses: Writing Poetry Inspired by History

Often children’s fascination with history lies not so much in the big events but in the personal, in small lives played out on the big stage.

To encourage children to write historical poetry they need to have been saturated in the history of the period they are studying. They need to know a lot about, for example, the Battle of Hastings before they can write about it in any meaningful way. The best poetry will then come from visiting the site of the battle and looking across the valley, thinking about the quiet morning before the battle begins, the mood in the camps, the battle itself and the aftermath.

Connections are also to be found in historic buildings, in the interplay between past & present.

The castle once heard the thunder of the firing cannons

but now hears the bleeping of foghorns.

The castle once saw great warships coming from the seas

but now sees sailing boats and ferries.

I’ve often been asked by schools to work on location with them, as part of a school trip. On two occasions I was writer in residence at Castle Cornet on Guernsey and was asked to devise a writers’ trail around the castle as a permanent resource.

The Channel Islands were occupied by German troops during World War 11 and many soldiers were stationed in the castle. Their gun emplacements can still be seen there along with the names of wives and girlfriends that they carved above the entrances. Children were asked to empathise with these soldiers and to write letter poems from the carvings.

My darling Urzal,

I am writing to feel warm with your love.

The wind is whipping my face as I write.

In the summer the weather is lovely

and we sunbathe and play cards.

But in Winter, storms sweep in across the sea

and Guernsey seems to attract them.

It is often said of historic buildings that we would know all about them if their walls could talk. At Hammerwood House in West Sussex, children are always impressed by the exploits of other children who once lived in the house and particularly how they used to climb out of their nursery window and onto the roof. From here they would make their way to an open skylight in the kitchen roof and drop pebbles into bowls of food being prepared below. Before writing, children made a list of alternative words for ‘talk’.

If these walls could talk

they would complain

of the children running up and down the hall.

They would gossip

about the maid who works in the kitchen.

They would joke

about the new born baby.

They would grumble

about the harp and the loud music.

They would laugh

about the pebbles in the porridge.

They would confess

that everything in the house they love

(except for the harp).

At Michelham Priory in East Sussex, we toured the house and grounds looking for shapes.

If I were a shape at Michelham Priory

I’d be a rectangular picture frame

surround a famous general’s face.

I’d be an irregular flagstone

walked upon by thousands of monks.

I’d be an arch, wide and proud,

holding up more than my own weight.

I’d be a sphere, a sour but juicy crab apple

ready to fall from a tree.

And again at Michelham, there were observations that wouldn’t have arisen in the classroom

Echoes of monks of long, long ago,

the brink of history, so exciting.

The leaves swayed back and forward

as the plants relaxed

and the wind massaged their stalks.

A thousand-year-old tree,

its hole like a mouth and branches

like arms from a giant awaking after a nap.

Taking children out of the classroom and into an environment where their imagination can be fuelled by what they see, feel and hear just has to be one of the most rewarding experiences for both children and teachers.

Brian Moses

Brian Moses writes poetry and picture books for children. His new poetry book Selfies With Komodos was published by Otter-Barry Books earlier this year and a new collection, On Poetry Street, will be available from Scallywag Press in May 2024. His website is www.brianmoses.co.uk and he blogs about children’s writing at brian-moses.blogspot.com Follow on twitter for daily poetry prompts @moses_brian

Children's Poet and Educator

Joshua Seigal: EMC Poetry Playlist, Contemporary Voices for the Classroom

I would like to draw everyone’s attention to a new publication from the fantastic English and Media Centre in London. EMC Poetry Playlist: Contemporary Voices for the Classroom is a collection of 130 poems for 11-16 year olds. This blog post cannot really be called a review, as I am not impartial – I feel extremely honoured to have a poem included in the anthology, alongside famous writers and some of my own poetic heroes like Simon Armitage and Michael Rosen. I’d just like to say a few words about why I think the anthology is indispensable in the KS3 classroom, and to pick out a few of my favourite poems.

As well as the sheer variety of styles and themes on display, it is notable that none of the poems seems, in any obvious sense, to have been written for 11-16 year olds. By this I mean that the poems, whilst chosen for their accessibility to young people, have an appeal to everyone. In some sense I do not believe there is such a thing as ‘children’s poetry’; there is simply poetry, some of which might (or might not) appeal to children. The best children’s poetry always goes beyond this narrow remit, and this is very much borne out in EMC Poetry Playlist.

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications/emc-poetry-playlist-contemporary-voices-for-the-classroom

A unique feature of the anthology is that individual poets were invited to curate their own ‘playlists’. These poets are all well known for their work with young people, and include Jacob Sam-La Rose, my MA mentor at Goldsmiths College. Each of these poets also comments on their selection, homing in on a specific poem and explaining why they chose it. Of particular interest was Hollie McNish’s choice of ‘Smile’ by Maria Ferguson. The poem tackles something that is a perennial bugbear of mine: when people tell other people to ‘smile’. Ferguson concludes her piece with ‘And maybe I can’t, you know?/ Maybe I can’t.’ McNish says of the poem: “It reminds me it’s ok to be serious about things and that you’re not a ‘killjoy’ if you don’t giggle or smile on demand.” This is a message I would definitely have been grateful to receive as a young person.

Another piece that captured my attention was ‘The Falcon to the Falconer’ by Jonathan Steffen. The poem expresses a desire on the part of the bird to be free – ‘unleash me from your hand’. Repetition is used to great effect, mirroring the return of the bird to its handler, and some of the language is sumptuous. The alliteration in ‘I will lance the light for you’, coupled with the sibilance in the word ‘lance’, reflects the direct, quickfire flight of the bird, and the final lines, ‘O, give me back my wings/That they may bring me back to you’, emphasises that, all along, the relationship between the falcon and the falconer is one of symbiosis and mutual respect.

Talking of birds, Caroline Bird has two cracking poems in the book. Both are surreal, funny and accessible in equal measure. I especially enjoyed ‘Megan Married Herself’, which is a paean to self-love. The image of a woman marrying herself, accompanied by all the trappings of a traditional wedding, is highly comic, but carries an important message for young people, namely to be as devoted to themselves and their own wellbeing as to any putative partner. Especially poignant, I think, is the remark of one of the wedding guests to himself: “I’m the only one who will truly understand you”. After all, as Rabbi Hillel famously remarked, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

Joshua Seigal

Joshua Seigal is an internationally renowned poet, performer and educator. His first book with Bloomsbury, I Don’t Like Poetry, was nominated for the Laugh Out Loud Book Awards in 2017, an award Joshua subsequently won in 2020 with his collection I Bet I Can Make You Laugh. Joshua was also the recipient of The People’s Book Prize in 2022, and has performed at schools and festivals around the world, including the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, and the Dubai Literature Festival. He is an Official Ambassador for National Poetry Day, and has been commissioned to write and perform for the BBC. He can normally be found running poetry workshops and performances in schools, either online or in real life. www.joshuaseigal.co.uk

Children's Poet and Educator

Shauna Darling Robertson: Using Poetry to Talk About Young People’s Mental Health

Poetry can be a great resource for exploring our thoughts and feelings, providing a ‘way in’ to help us connect with different voices inside ourselves and to share them with others. Also, by talking about scenarios or characters in a poem, we can reflect on personal topics from a safe distance.

My new poetry collection, You Are Not Alone (Troika, 2023) is written with teens and young adults in mind and is all about young people’s mental health and wellbeing. I’m working on a series of themed resources to accompany the book – all freely available at www.troikabooks.com/you-are-not-alone – and this exercise is taken from one of them.

From ‘Let’s Talk About… Anxiety’

Exploring the poem in a therapeutic, classroom, community or family setting.

The complete resource includes some suggestions for working with these questions in larger group settings such as classrooms.

What do you think the relationship between the two people in the poem could be? See how many different possibilities come to mind.
Why might inviting someone to meet for coffee feel like this? Why do you think that the risks listed get bigger and bigger?
Read through the poem again and, for each couplet (pair of lines), note down a few feelings the person in the poem might be experiencing at that point. Include some physical sensations in the body as well as emotions.
How do you feel about the ending of the poem? Do you think it’s true that ‘the risks involved were way, way too great’? Why / why not?
The poet has made a short film based on her poem, which you can view below. Does watching the multimedia film affect your experience of the poem? Why / how?

Extension activity: the ‘what ifs’

Think of a situation that you feel (or have felt in the past) anxious about. If nothing comes to mind, or if you’d rather not work with a real situation right now, feel free to imagine one. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into three sections.

In section 1, write down some of your fears about the situation, starting each one with ‘What if…’.

In section 2, continue writing ‘What if…’ fears, but now make them deliberately exaggerated, maybe even bizarre, surreal or comedic.

In section 3, your ‘What if…’ list is going to be all of the things that could go right, or turn out even better than expected. This time, you can mix up realistic and surreal examples.

Take a few moments to reflect on how it felt for you to work on each of the three sections above. How did it feel to think about real fears versus exaggerated or surreal ones? How did it feel to focus on fear versus positive anticipation?
Could you write, draw or make something inspired by your lists in the previous exercise? This might be a poem, a short-short story or some prose snippets. Or it could be some artwork (a drawing or painting, collage, 3D object, etc), a cartoon or comic strip, some music, a video, or a even short playlist of 3-5 songs – totally your call!

In group settings, you might like to set part 3 as ‘homework’ and invite participants to share their creations in a mini exhibition / performance in a subsequent session.

If you use any of these exercises, feel free to drop me a line, I’d love to hear how you got on!

Shauna Darling Robertson

Shauna Darling Robertson grew up in the north-east of England and now lives in the south-west. She has two poetry collections for young people: Saturdays at the Imaginarium (Troika, 2020), a National Poetry Day 2021 selection, and You Are Not Alone (Troika, 2023). Shauna’s a keen collaborator and her poems for children and adults have been performed by actors, displayed on buses, used as song lyrics, made into short films and turned into comic art. www.shaunadarlingrobertson.com

Shauna is grateful to have received funding from Arts Council England‘s ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ programme to support work on You Are Not Alone.

Children's Poet and Educator

Cheryl Moskowitz: Integrating Poetry Throughout the Curriculum

As a school, we realised that poetry did not have a high prestige within the school curriculum and as a way of promoting and placing more emphasis on it, we asked Cheryl to come in and spend a day with every year group. We wanted the work to link in with the unit they were studying whether that be science, reading, history or geography. Before Cheryl came in, the children had already amassed a certain amount of knowledge, so they were able to apply that to constructing a poem as a class, which contributed towards a whole year group poem. What worked incredibly was that Cheryl liaised with the year groups prior to ensure she knew what knowledge the children had and was able to do her own research. She could then guide the writing and put her own spin on the direction. The children were enthused and inspired and every child was able to access the work. By the end of the day, the children had been able to construct and perform a high-class poem.

David Combe – Assistant Headteacher, George Spicer Primary School

For the past year and a half, I have been working with George Spicer Primary School in Enfield, North London as their official ‘Resident Poet’ working individually with each of the four classes in every year group across the school from Reception through Year 6 on special topic areas within their curriculum.

So far I have explored hibernation with Year 1 on their ‘Winter is Coming’ topic, discovered extinct and endangered animals with Year 2, learned about the lives of native people on the Great Plains of North America and events leading up to the Battle of Little Bighorn through the ‘First Nations’ topic with Year 3. Twice now, this year and last, I have worked with year 5 pupils to create an epic poem outlining the infamous deeds and long-lasting legacies of the warrior-ruler and founder of the Mongolian empire, Genghis Khan. And with Year 6, learning about the Battle of Stalingrad as part of their topic on World War II, we wrote powerful poetry on war and conflict.

Later this Spring I will be delving into ‘Ancient Greece’ with Year 4 and in the summer term I look forward to working with the Reception classes on their special topic.

Being ‘Resident Poet’ in a primary school can take on many forms. Poetry does not need to be taught, but rather can happen out of a desire to consolidate what is already known and a need to learn and understand more. School is an ideal environment for poetry to take place. Working together with pupils and teachers, poetry can be a collaborative act, a showing and telling fuelled by curiosity, conversation, and the sharing of ideas. The joy of integrating poetry throughout the curriculum is that everyone benefits.

The children started by looking at words associated with conflict and we used those to create cinquains and rhyming couplets, thinking about how to make meaning and evoke emotions in the reader. The day was so engaging and the children were inspired – they could not wait to showcase their poems.’ Mrs A. Wellbrook (Year 6)

We were looking at extinct animals in our Science unit, specifically ‘The last Thylacine’. Cheryl did extensive research and each class had an opportunity to write a poem about its endangered cousins which they shared in an assembly at the end of the day. All were enthused and engaged by poetry and really felt a sense of achievement in the work they had produced. Mr J. Roberts (Year 2)

We invited Cheryl to come in to create some poetry on our unit on Genghis Khan. It was a collaborative process so we worked closely before the day to ensure everyone was on the same page. The children were so inspired and this was an amazing way for them to demonstrate their knowledge and create a really powerful piece of poetry. Ms A. Dawson (Yr 5)

With thanks to all at George Spicer Primary School www.georgespicer.enfield.sch.uk @GeorgeSpicerSch

Cheryl Moskowitz is a poet with over 30 years’ experience working as a writer in schools. From 2014-2017 she pioneered a ground-breaking Poetry Residency working across the curriculum with pupils, staff and the wider multi-lingual community at Highfield Primary School in Enfield. Her poems for children appear in numerous anthologies including the award-winning Poems from a Green & Blue Planet (ed Sabrina Mahfouz, Hodder Children’s Books 2019) and A World Full of Poems (DK Children’s Books, 2020). Her collection Can it Be About Me? (Circle Time Press 2019)is now in its third reprint and in 2020 she wrote The Corona Collection – A Conversation a unique poetry collection reflecting children’s voices and perspectives on the pandemic. https://www.coronacollectionpoetry.com

Children's Poet and Educator

Rachel Piercey: Tyger Tyger Issue 2 – Meet the Poems

I am delighted to introduce the second issue of Tyger Tyger Magazine, which launched on 16 May with twelve leaping, loping, kicking, crawling, slithering, splashing poems on the theme of Animals. We’re also calling for submissions for our next issue – see below for further details.

There is lots to learn in this Animals edition. ‘Tightrope Walk Team’ by S. J. Perillo is a mischievous list poem which revels in the unusual and exquisite names of different species. In his poem ‘Is a zebra like a horse?’, Will Birkin decisively answers the question of whether you can ride a zebra in a funny, rhyming investigation. And Sue Lancaster’s ‘Tail Tales’ invites us on a hugely enjoyable whistle-stop tour of different animals and how they use their tails, from squirrels to geckoes to kangaroos.

There are questions to ask, too. L. Kiew’s ‘Otter Questions’ wonders about the life of an otter, plunging us into her world using rich language and resonant kennings. And Annie Fisher challenges us to guess the slow, gooey creature whom gardeners fear, in her riddle poem ‘Who?’…

Cats are well represented in the selection. ‘The School Cats’ is a deeply imaginative and playful trio of poems by Catherine Olver, introducing us to three mysterious resident cats who have merged with their school environment. ‘Honey, best cat in the world’ by Michael Shann is a warmly lyrical and conversational poem about a beloved lost pet who helped and still helps the speaker through difficult emotions. And there’s a stray dog too, a noble and heroic character looking for a friend in Zaro Weil’s moving mini epic ‘Stray Dog in Havana’.

‘I Am Fionnula’ by Sophie Kirtley is a beautifully lyrical lament, a fresh take on the age-old theme of human-to-animal transformation, based on the Irish legend of The Children of Lir. Fionnula has been changed into a swan, but she still has her voice… Imaginative transformations also take place – suddenly and thrillingly – in Julie Stevens’s ‘Tickets to Ride’. The poem lets us in on a secret: that you can travel anywhere, to any animal habitat, if you use your imagination and creativity to find the ‘tickets’!

Mark Granier’s haunting poem ‘The ____saurus’ echoes with the roar of a mysterious, nameless dinosaur, still burning bright in our dreams. Meanwhile, at the other end of history, Jacqueline Shirtliff gives voice to a range of sea creatures urgently requesting that we sort out the issue of plastic in our oceans, in her rallying environmental poem ‘Too Many Bottles’.

Thank you to my fantastic editorial team, Rakhshan Rizwan, Helen Steffens and Kate Wakeling, and thank you to the poets for their wonderful poems. As before, all of them are available as free poem-posters, which you can download and print out. There are also free teaching resources to accompany ‘Tightrope Walk Team’, ‘Tickets to Ride’, and ‘Who?’, all aimed at children in Key Stage 2. There are ideas for exploring the poems and inspiring creative responses, and stylish templates to print out so that pupils can write up and display their finished poems.

Tyger Tyger Magazine is also currently open for submissions of new poems for children on the theme of The Colour Spectrum, until 30 June. This will be our autumn edition and we wanted to nod to the famous seasonal colours whilst keeping the theme open to every hue, and any approach. Send us poems of art, science, history and emotion – we can’t wait to read them!

Rachel Piercey

Rachel Piercey is a poet and tutor, and the editor of Tyger Tyger Magazine, an online journal of poems for children. She has co-edited three children’s poetry anthologies with the Emma Press, taught several courses on writing children’s poems for The Poetry School, and regularly performs and runs poetry workshops in primary schools. Rachel has written a poetry search-and-find book, If You Go Down the Woods Today (Magic Cat, 2021), and three pamphlets of poems for adults.

Children's Poet and Educator

Pie Corbett: The City of Stars

This game is one of my favourite surreal poetry games. Put the children into pairs. The first pair makes a list of 5 generic places (by that, I mean not ‘Paris’ but ‘city’) or containers (suitcase, pocket, jar, etc.) and their partner makes a list of abstract nouns – without seeing each other’s lists, e.g.

Generic places: city, cellar, beach, cupboard, attic, town, village, house, shop, cathedral, park, forest, planet, pocket, backpack, jar, musical box.

Abstract nouns: wonder, despair, grief, greed, sadness, joy, death, hope, peace, kindness, jealousy, war, imagination, creativity, anger, anxiety, happiness.

The pairs then put their two lists together in the order in which the words were written. This is to ensure that the combinations are random and not influenced by logic. The combinations that work best are the fresh and startling juxtapositions when two ideas are placed together that have never been heard before. It is this unique combination that catches the imagination. If I use my first five ideas from each list, it would produce:

The city of wonder

The cellar of despair

The beach of grief

The cupboard of greed

The attic of sadness

You could then choose out one idea and create a list poem:

In the city of wonder, I saw –

A serpent with eyes of rubies,

A song thrush flying from a golden cage,

A sunset slipping over the darkening landscape,

In the city of wonder, I found –

A scarlet rug, softer than an eagle’s feathers,

A crimson pen nib, sharper than pirate’s blade,

A scintillating canary, yellow as mustard blossom.

James Walker from a Bristol primary school experimented with his year 6 class. He began by ‘banking’ with the children as many ‘colour’ words as possible plus abstract and ‘magical’ nouns. When randomly combined this gave lists of ideas such as:

Velvet shadows

Ebony whispers

Indigo happiness

Cerise laughter, etc

Of course, the sentences need verbs to provide the power and action for the lists of colours and abstract nouns. Five minutes rapid brainstorming gave the class a considerable list. Rapid brainstorming is an important part of teaching writing. The brainstorm trains the mind to generate possibilities. During the writing, the writer than has to select and judge – what makes most impact, what works?

James then used shared writing on the flipchart to work with the children developing magical and mysterious sentences. It’s important to model the writing of a text so that the teacher can develop writerly habits such as ‘first thought isn’t always the best thought’. The task is fun, accessible and inclusive and encourages children to play with words without fear.

The children moved straight into writing independently, drawing on their lists of colours and abstract nouns, extending their own sentences. The class wrote in silence and at a pace.

Sapphire suns created golden shadows whilst an indigo moon conjured up a velvet nightmare.

A cobalt truth floated gently through the captured eternity as a gossamer spell darted violently through the ashen sky.

I asked James what he had learned and he replied:

– all children love being creative;

– generating and judging ideas;

– going off at tangents / no limits;

– warming up the imagination.

My thanks to James Walker who is a class teacher and ‘Talk for Writing’ trainer. He runs training and development projects: https://www.talk4writing.com/train-with-us/james-walker/

Pie Corbett

Pie Corbett is a teacher-poet – his collection ‘Evidence of `Dragons’ is used in many classrooms. He has published and edited over 250 books, runs ‘Talk for Writing’ and was made an honorary Doctor of Letters for services to creativity, poetry and social justice by the Open University. During Lockdown, he produced a daily, interactive radio show based on developing children as readers and writers. Each show featured a guest poet or author and all 60 shows are available for free: https://radioblogging.net

Children's Poet and Educator

Matt Goodfellow: Teachers as Poets

On an actual in-person school visit earlier this year (I know, a rarity, right?), a teacher mentioned she’d spotted how many writers had a background in education. Off the top of my head, I can think of… Jan Dean, Brian Moses, Roger Stevens, Pie Corbett, Coral Rumble, Andy Seed, James Carter, Wes Magee, Rachel Rooney, Me, Sue Hardy-Dawson… I’m sure you can think of more…

So, why, in my opinion, is the teaching profession such a successful spawning ground for writers?

Aspiring teacher-writers are around their target audience all day – they read to them and can see first-hand what they like and what they don’t. There are plenty of opportunities to slip their own writing in – or I certainly did – to gauge reaction.

Teachers enjoy engaging with children. I hated the paperwork, pressure and ever-increasing workload of life as a teacher, but always loved talking to children – having a laugh, hearing what made them tick. It inspired poems…and still does. Teachers who want to write will have their receptors tuned in.

Also, the wannabe teacher-writer will (hopefully!) get to witness in full glorious technicolour those already doing the job – when I was a primary teacher, I was lucky enough to have writers including Jan Dean, Brian Moses, Tom Palmer, Nick Toczek and Wes Magee in school – and watched what they did and how they did it. Some did assemblies, some didn’t, some only worked with KS2 classes, some did Q+As etc – they all had their own style – and I could cherry pick!

Those with a teaching background will be confident in pitching the level of work they ask children to do in their sessions – and, on a practical level, will have an awareness of how to organise a workshop session: what equipment will all classrooms have? How should a 30min/45min/1hr be structured? How much input is needed in order to get the children writing?

Teaching is one big performance! You can be the finest writer of poetry the world has ever seen – but stand in front of a 3-form-entry infant school, or a 4-form-entry junior school where the streetwise Y6s eye you with the utmost suspicion, and you realise that you have to be able to perform – entertain, engage and hold the attention of children (and the adults sitting round the side!). An audience of adults watching a boring performance will most probably remain polite…. 350 bored 5-7 year olds will immediately let you know they’re bored.

Alongside the day-to-day classroom ‘performance’, teachers will generally have a track record in delivering assemblies, the physical act of standing up in front of large groups of children and being the focal point. This doesn’t come naturally to everyone but those who’ve taught will have had to do it…and will have developed their own style. Even as a class teacher with no leadership responsibility, I was on a weekly rota for Key Stage 2 assemblies (and often had to cover whole school assemblies) – it was a time when the other class teachers stayed in their classrooms catching up on marking etc and crucially allowed me to deliver whatever official message I had to deliver…and then sneak some poems in to get them road-tested in front of mixed ages…what work? What doesn’t? What gets the Y6s joining in as well as the Y3s etc?

No wonder so many writers come from a teaching background!

Matt Goodfellow

Matt Goodfellow is from Manchester. He is a National Poetry Day Ambassador for the Forward Arts Foundation. His most recent collection is ‘Bright Bursts of Colour’ (Bloomsbury 2020).

Children's Poet and Educator

Cheryl Moskowitz: From The Raven to The Odyssey

From The Raven to the Odyssey

So here we are, a new year and schools closed again.

As a poet writing for children, I want to know: what it is like to be a child at this time? What is most boring, most interesting, most concerning about the current situation from a child’s point of view? How are they spending their time? What games are they playing? What stories and poems are they reading, and what do they themselves most need to write?

When the first lockdown began in March 2020 I spoke to children directly about the pandemic, about not being able to go to school or see their friends. They talked about their worries and frustrations, their wishes and hopes, and their visions for a corona-free world. I wrote poems in response to those conversations to reflect their experience. Back then the coronavirus was new. Scary perhaps but also different, interesting and maybe even for some, exciting.

*Children from Margate class with their ‘Poetry Passports’ at The Beacon, a foundation special school in Kent*

Since then we have been through many rule changes, loosening and tightening of restrictions and at the time of writing, we have just entered a new national lockdown and Covid-19 is no longer a novelty.

The pandemic is not the only thing going on in children’s lives – new things happen all the time. Fresh experiences that need processing. That’s why conversation is so important. To converse means literally to ‘live among’ or to be ‘familiar with’ and it is how we exchange important feelings and ideas. Social distancing puts up barriers to conversation, so we have had to find new ways to converse meaningfully, particularly with our children.

Last Autumn, when schools were in attendance, I was fortunate enough to take part in Pop Up’s SEND Festival, usually a hands-on literature programme for pupils in special schools. This time the ‘hands-on’ element needed to be virtual rather than actual but that was an exciting and interesting challenge.

My first task was to find a way to familiarise myself with the children and them with me, before my online visit. Key to this was talking to teachers about their pupils, finding out about individual quirks. I also made a video in which I introduced myself and set the pupils a task of making a ‘poetry passport’. They had to choose an alias instead of their name, identify a distinguishing characteristic, state a like and dislike, a dream, an ambition, and something they would never do.

This ‘sneak peek’ I had of the children’s personalities, dreams and dreads enabled me to write a riddle-type poem containing hints of all their identities and proved to be an engaging way to start the session. Having recognised themselves in the poem I’d written, they were much more willing to engage and write revealing and moving poems of their own, even though (or maybe because!) I was on one side of the screen and they on the other.

When we share a piece of writing or a favourite poem with one another this is also a form of conversation. During these past months I’ve been mentoring a 9-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy in creative writing. It has been revelatory to let these young people set the agenda. The boy, who loves dystopian fiction, led me to ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe which, with its powerful incantation Nevermore, is a poem about living with loss.

The girl has steered me towards Homer’s Odyssey and we are still puzzling together whether the eponymous hero should be held responsible for so many of his fellow men’s deaths. There could not be two better metaphors for our times. Schools may be closed but children’s minds are most certainly not.

Cheryl Moskowitz

Cheryl Moskowitz is a poet and educator. She writes for adults and children, runs workshops regularly in schools and is passionate about getting teachers and pupils to write their own poems. She runs writing projects in a wide variety of community settings often working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. She serves on the Creative Council for Create Arts and is working with Pop Up on a three-year project to develop creative resources for use in SEN schools across Kent.

Children's Poet and Educator

James Carter: Growing A Poetry Book

Growing a Poetry Book

From Cars, Stars, Electric Guitars – my first collection for 7-11s – onwards, I’ve aimed to create each collection as though they were quasi-anthologies – ie with multiple poets – so they’ll have as much variety as possible. When I interviewed Norman Silver he said he aimed to make a collection like a ‘biscuit tin’, so readers could dip in anywhere not knowing what they’d get. Boom! That became my template.

Assembling each collection has been all about engaging, intriguing and sustaining a reader. Overall, I’m after breadth and balance, so I’ll include rhyming verse, as much free verse as I can (too much rhyme and it can get a tad samey), syllabic poems, all kinds – mainly short to medium length poems. I want a range of tones/ voices / themes – some daft ones – but reflective pieces too. As KS2 books will be mostly read by children themselves – unlike EY/KS1 books – I try and ensure that the poems are ‘page’ not performance poems, so they work in the mind’s ear of the reader.

From research I’ve learnt adults dip in and out of poetry books; children read in a linear fashion. Therefore, I don’t want a child a) to know what’s coming next – or b) worse, leave my book and return to a novel. I want them to keep reading. Unpredictability is key! Curiously, I think I’ve always tried to write poems for children that don’t necessarily like verse. I’m not trying to proselytise, even trick them into enjoying poetry, but I like the idea of someone going ‘I’m not into poems, but I like this one!’ I started out as that kind of reader, and only began reading verse properly as I first wrote it 25 years ago. I’m obsessed with words, and poetry (along with non-fiction) is the most rewarding experience I can have as a writer. I l o v e the musicality of verse and equally its philosophical way of saying ‘hey, look at that – but look at it like this..’. I get the idea that children might too.

By the time I’ve sent a manuscript in, I’ll have spent five intense years of writing, re-writing, scrapping (1000+ poems) and crucially, showing poems to other writers for candid comments. Other poets know about the tinkering under the bonnet; what needs further tweaks. Craft is everything.

My latest, Weird Wild & Wonderful, is a ‘best of’, from 25 years of writing. I sent 75+ mainly tried-and-tested poems to my publisher, the wise and unfailingly insightful Janetta Otter-Barry. She rejected 20 or so from those and then we went through a ‘maybe’ pile together. The criteria for this book included what a first-time reader might enjoy, but also which poems had been most anthologised, those that had received favourable comments from children/teachers and those that had gone down well in schools. I included several newies. Some older poems needed tweaks as I am more obsessive about tightness/scansion nowadays!

The title naturally suggested three sections: Weird contains the lighter, dafter poems, Wild has natural world poems, and Wonderful a brace of quieter poems. I wrote a brand new poem to finish the book. As with all my KS2 collections, I’ve attempted to weave the poems together, with a ‘paper chain’-style thematic/linguistic link from one to the next.

I began as an educational writer/occasional poet, and never thought I’d do one, let alone five collections. How lucky. With this, I’m doubly so – as Neal Layton, illustrator extraordinaire, agreed to do the artwork and did a brilliant job on our book. Cheers, Neal!

James Carter

JAMES CARTER is an award-winning children’s poet, non-fiction writer and musician. An ambassador for National Poetry Day, he travels all over the UK with his melodica (that’s Steve) to give lively poetry & music performances / workshops / INSET days, and now virtual visits too! www.jamescarterpoet.co.uk

Children's Poet and Educator

Val Bloom: Poetry as a Mirror

Poetry as a Mirror

I was in a school for the first time since lockdown at the beginning of October. One of the teachers recounted a lesson she’d had with some disenchanted young boys in a former school. She’d told them they were going to be doing poetry and was bombarded with groans and cries of “Boring!” So she challenged them.

“I bet I can make you change your mind.”

They were not convinced.

She then brought out one of my books and at the end of the lesson one of the boys came up to her and confessed that she’d changed his mind about poetry. He was now an enthusiast.

I was reminded of an experience I had as a newly qualified English teacher in Jamaica. I went back to teach English in my old school, where the classes were streamed, with A being the most academically gifted. One of my classes was 9V.

In the first lesson, I found myself talking to the walls as the ‘children’ who were mostly boys and mostly bigger than I was, jumped on the desks, threw things at each other, climbed the walls and completely ignored me. The second class went more or less the same way.

In desperation I took in a copy of Jamaica Labrish, a book of poems by the late Honourable Louise Bennett (Miss Lou), written in Jamaican. I stood at the front of the class and started to read one of the poems. One by one they returned to their seats and sat listening in silence, except for bursts of laughter at the comic sections. Afterwards, they clamoured for more but, thinking on my feet I said, “No, it’s your time.”

I divided the poem among them and formed an impromptu speech choir. They were brilliant. So brilliant that I conceived of a plan to enter them in the National Speech Festival. They won a gold medal and became the toast of the school. The next year many of them were promoted to the A stream.

A few years later I returned to Jamaica and met one of those young men in Kingston. He was on his way to the National Gallery where he was mounting an exhibition of his work.

“It’s all because of you, Miss,” he said.

But he was wrong. It was all because of Miss Lou and her poetry.

Two of my poems were included in the NEAB GCSE syllabus. Both were written in Jamaican. Sometime afterwards I was performing in Leicester when a young lady approached me.

“I had to come and say thank you,” she said. “For helping me to pass my English exam.”

At my puzzled look she explained that she’d had no interest in English, that she couldn’t understand any of it until she saw my poem. She was convinced she would not have passed her exam but for the poem written in Jamaican.

The common thread in these episodes is that in all instances the children could see themselves in the poems. So many of my fellow writers have said they started writing because they couldn’t see themselves in the books that were available to them. It’s getting better, but the importance of letting children see themselves in poetry books cannot be stressed enough.

Stars with Flaming Tails, to be published in January 2021

Poetry helps us make sense of our world. It’s harder to make sense of a world that’s unrecognisable. When the poem mirrors a child’s experience, the child can place herself in the poem. Conversely, if she can’t see herself in the poetry books, she’ll feel those books belong to others, but not to her.

Poems are not just mirrors. They’re windows through which we look into others’ lives, so diversity in poetry benefits everyone. As well as seeing themselves, children benefit from learning about and understanding other cultures, other experiences. In order to help our children become well-rounded adults, respecting others, we need to help them look into the mirrors and through the windows of diverse poetry books.

Val Bloom

Valerie Bloom MBE was born and grew up in Jamaica. She is the author of several volumes of poetry for adults and children, picture books, pre-teen and teenage novels and stories for children, and has edited a number of collections of poetry for children. Val has presented poetry programmes for the BBC, and has contributed to various radio and television programmes. She performs her poetry, runs writing workshops, and conducts training courses for teachers worldwide.