Books for Keeps – Children's Poetry Summit

Andrea Reece: Everyone’s a Winner

Everyone’s a winner

The Newbery Award is one hundred years old this year. Reading an article about the award and its 100 winners got me thinking about prizes, their importance and impact. I should say that prizes have been a big part of my professional life (though, sadly, not as a recipient). Publishers I’ve worked for have sponsored prizes; authors I’ve published have won them. I’ve been a judge myself (Costa Children’s Book Award 2015 – a big year). I’ve been part of the team behind the Branford Boase Award since 2012 and am currently running the Klaus Flugge Prize. And, most pertinent here, I’m delighted to say that this will be my third year working for CLPE on the publicity and promotion for the CLiPPA, the UK’s leading annual award for published poetry for children. Put it all together, and that’s a lot of judging sessions observed, and a great deal of applauding, not to mention lots of opportunities to ponder who prizes are for, and what they can do.

The Newbery anniversary has sparked debate around the list of winners and not all of its 100 winning books are recommended reading for today. Times change, taste and sensibilities with them of course, but it’s true too that anyone who’s participated in an award will be conscious of excellent nominees who, because of some one thing, failed to make the final list. Then too, if there can only be one winner, surely there must be four or five disappointed shortlistees too.

Well, no. Because to see a prize as only being about its winner really misses the point. As an expert, here are five glorious things I’ve realised are true of all prizes.

The judges. Every literary prize I’ve ever observed (and this is particularly true of the CLiPPA) had as its panel of judges a group of informed, enthusiastic and engaged people, ready to share their opinions honestly, to listen to their fellow judges, and to determine the very best qualities in each collection they were considering.
That excitement and passion is then shared with the public, bringing a whole new audience to books, poetry collections and poems that they would not otherwise have discovered.
The best shortlists – and again, this is particularly true of the CLiPPA but it’s also true of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prizes – do more than just showcase what is on the list. They highlight exactly what is happening in the field at the time, new and important developments, what is exciting the best practitioners of the moment. How cheering it is for example to see Manjeet Mann’s verse novel The Crossing on the shortlist for this year’s Costa Book Award, and then to see it win the category – the first time in the award’s history that the children’s prize has gone to a verse novel.
No matter how often we think that surely everything there is to say or think has been said, thought or described, prizes put the spotlight on new and original work, reminding us all of the boundless capacity of human imagination.
And finally, the celebrations are for everyone. Michael Rosen was named winner of the 2021 CLiPPA but on the day of the announcement, didn’t it feel as though everyone was talking about children’s poetry? How glorious was that!

Even as I write this, submissions are coming in for the 2022 CLiPPA – publishers, there’s still time if you have yet to put your books forward – and entries are also pouring in for the much-loved CLiPPA Shadowing, the scheme that prompts poetry performances in schools up and down the country. I can’t wait to share the announcement of this year’s shortlist and the celebrations of the very best new poetry books for children.

Andrea Reece

Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps and reviews editor for Lovereading4Kids. She’s also director of the Children’s Programme for the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. As administrator and publicist for prizes the CLiPPA, Branford Boase Award and Klaus Flugge Prize, she knows how to keep a secret and enforce an embargo.

Book Magazine Editor

Andrea Reece: P is for … Reasons to be Cheerful

P is for … Reasons to be Cheerful

The last time I wrote a blog for the Poetry Summit it was January, eight months and a different world ago. Who would have thought way back then, that the ‘p’ word defining 2020 would not be poetry but pandemic? My diary (I’m old-school and use a paper one, don’t @ me) is full of crossings-out: the whole of the Oxford Literary Festival including events I’d organised on the children’s and young people’s programme with (gulp) Nikita Gill, Rakaya Fetuga, Jinhao Xie, Troy Cabida, and another with (gulp again) Allie Esiri, Samuel West, Diana Quick, Hugh Ross and Gina Bellman; a big scribble blots out 13 July, which should have been the date for the joyful and inspiring extravaganza that is the CLiPPA award ceremony at the National Theatre.

Looking back though, even if our year has been marked by a peculiar silence, for me as for many I’m sure, it has been punctuated by poetry. Moments I’ll remember include sitting in the garden listening to Roger Robinson’s new recordings for the Poetry Archive; the brilliant Forward Meet the Poet sessions featuring readings from the ten books shortlisted for the Forward Prizes and question and answer sessions with the shortlisted poets; Laura Mucha’s Dear Key Workers thank you poem to the NHS, created with the help of children cheered me hugely (and still does).

Now though, after all the cancellations and postponements, there are real reasons to be cheerful, amongst them the news that the CLiPPA Show will go on. Thanks to a new partnership between CLPE and The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, the CLiPPA will be celebrated in the Festival’s programme for schools and families, and the winner announced in a very special Festival Poetry Show on Friday 9 October. The Poetry Show will be introduced live by CLiPPA judges, Valerie Bloom and Steven Camden, and will feature performances by the shortlisted poets. Schools across the UK and beyond will be able to watch the show for free, and then, thoroughly inspired, join in a special post-event shadowing scheme and create their own poetry performances. By the way, the shortlist will be announced on National Poetry Day, 1 October, another big date that’s certainly not going to be crossed out.

If that isn’t enough, just take a look at the autumn poetry publication schedules – there are some extraordinarily good collections coming out. Many of my favourites are highlighted in the National Poetry Day recommended lists, including The Book of Not Entirely Useful Advice by A F Harrold and Mini Grey, SLAM!, the collection we were so excited to celebrate at the Oxford Literary Festival, and She Will Soar, a superb new collection edited by Ana Sampson, but The Girl Who Became a Tree (Otter-Barry Books) by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Klaus Flugge Prize winner Kate Milner, is heart-stoppingly powerful, a mesmerising exploration of grief and renewal, while I haven’t stopped thinking about Punching the Air by Yusef Salaam and Ibi Zobo since I read it this summer. HarperCollins will publish in the UK on 1 September, make sure you get a copy.

And one other thing that’s making me happy: in my last blog on here, I’d suggested that as part of the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Books for Keeps, the UK’s leading children’s books review journal, we might create a new BfK Poetry Guide, and we’ve decided to do just that. It will be published on National Poetry Day – when else? – and will be packed full of features, interviews with poets and of course reviews of the outstanding new poetry being published for children. You can get in touch to find out more or with feature suggestions (andrea@booksforkeeps.co.uk), and sign up for our newsletter to get it delivered to your inbox on National Poetry Day. (PS if you missed our July issue, there’s a great interview with Joshua Seigal by Liz Brownlee that I highly recommend).

Andrea Reece

Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.

Book Magazine Editor

Andrea Reece: Poetry ‘for keeps’; a history in 240 issues

Poetry ‘for keeps’; a history in 240 issues

Among the anniversaries to be celebrated in 2020 is one very important landmark for children’s literature: Books for Keeps, the children’s book magazine, is 40. In its very first issue, way back in 1980, editor Pat Triggs explained what the magazine would be: ‘Helpful, practical, stimulating, informative, entertaining, sometimes provocative and always enjoyable to read’. And so it has remained, as a dip into the archives reveals. Past issues are all available to read for free on the website, four decades worth of serious (though never earnest) scrutiny of writing for young people.

Unsurprisingly, poetry for children has been a major preoccupation of BfK editors and contributors, and the archive is a revealing commentary on the contemporary history of the genre, the highs, lows, rise of new poets, and growing concentration on its importance to children themselves.

‘Every teacher needs a personal bookshelf of anthologies and collections of favourite poets. Every classroom needs poetry in the book corner.’ Editor Pat Triggs again, in 1983, lines that are just as true today, and need as much emphasis. She was writing in the era of the Signal Award for Poetry, a period when there was an unparalleled energy in the publishing of the genre, prompted perhaps, as Brian Alderson wondered at the time, by the presence of the Award itself. Such was the healthy state of poetry that in 1988 BfK was able to publish a guide to children’s poetry, edited by Chris Powling and Morag Styles. It was revised and updated in 1991. Authorgraph subjects of the 1990s include Roger McGough, Kit Wright, Charles Causley, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Michael Rosen and James Berry – and a delightfully playful conversation with Lewis Carroll no less, as imagined by Naomi Lewis. (For non-BfK readers, the Authorgraph is our feature interview, an in-depth discussion with leading writers for children).

In an article in 1996, then Puffin editor now agent Philippa Milnes-Smith was able to celebrate the impact poetry for children was having, and even to grumble that poetry accounted for less than 5% of children’s books published and was never considered for the Carnegie Medal. She was happy to stand up for comic verse too, and just as well, because there was a surprising amount of public hostility, as demonstrated by her favourite press clipping of the time: MUM CALLS FOR BAN ON REVOLTING NOSE POEM.

Come 2001 however and things feel gloomy. Robert Hull is forced to ask, ‘What hope for children’s poetry?’, worried that children’s understanding of poetry is being driven out by the curriculum. Comic poetry is no longer a laughing matter, and Morag Styles, judging the CLPE Poetry Award in 2004, worries about the preponderance of ‘relentlessly jokey books of second rate verse printed on rough paper’.

Jumping ahead a decade however, and things are on the up again. A trawl of BfK makes the reasons clear: the reinvigoration of the CLPE Poetry Award, now CLiPPA, which, like the Signal Award in the 20^th century, gave publishers reason again to invest in poetry; the combined efforts of organisations such as CLPE, NLT, UKLA, National Poetry Day and the Poetry Society to promote poetry for children; the work of campaigners such as Kate Clanchy, not to mention that of individual poets themselves in schools, festivals and, significantly, digitally. A search of recent issues will find articles on the influence of rap and hip-hop, on the liveliest techniques for encouraging children’s poetry writing, while round ups of the best new poetry feature books by 21^st century stars Rachel Rooney, Karl Nova and Kate Wakeling. Recent Authorgraph subjects have included Joseph Coelho, A F Harrold and Sarah Crossan and the July issue will feature Carnegie winning verse novelist Elizabeth Acevedo.

In fact, as we mark the 40^th anniversary, the time seems right to create another Books for Keeps Guide to Children’s Poetry. July seems the right time – coinciding with the announcement of the CLiPPA. What do you think?

Andrea Reece

Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.