Gaby Morgan – Children's Poetry Summit

Gaby Morgan: A Profile

As the first in a new series of Editors’ Profiles, we asked Gaby Morgan to talk about being a children’s poetry editor:

Who are you and which publishing house do you work for?

I am Gaby Morgan and I am an Associate Publisher at Macmillan Children’s Books.

How long have you been editing poetry for children and how many children’s poetry books have you published?

I have been editing poetry for 29 years and have published more than 350 books.

How did you get started?

I joined MCB as an Editorial Secretary working across the whole list and especially enjoyed working on the poetry and non-fiction. Soon after I joined, Susie Gibbs published the first two titles on a brand-new poetry list – they were highly illustrated, pocket money-priced books of poems written for kids rather than at them. They were hugely popular and the list is still going strong 30 years later. Macmillan has been particularly good at supporting the list not only through the high points but also (and more importantly) during the quieter times too.

What do you enjoy and not enjoy about working on poetry for children?

I love working with poets who write for children. They are friendly, supportive (especially of each other), enthusiastic and they know their audience.

Many of our anthologies are themed and it is amazing to see the different ways poets approach a topic.

There is always a poem that can help you express your mood or understand a moment in time – a birthday poem, a football poem, a poem to cheer you up or help you to understand how someone else is feeling. A poem can open your eyes to the world.

We work with incredible illustrators and they bring so much to the books and often provide a way into a poem or add a bit of extra context. Sometimes they just make you laugh. Martin Chatterton illustrated every cover for the first six years of the list which gave it a strong series identity.

It is not really a dislike, but clearing permissions is time consuming and can be a challenge. There is a lot of tracking down permission holders, waiting to hear back and negotiating fees. It generates an awful lot of paperwork. We spend a lot more time on this than on any other part of the editorial process.

Do you usually edit the poems and how do you decide how to order them in a collection or anthology?

An anthologist will send me a first draft and I read it through to see if any poems are doing the same job in the collection or if there are any gaps. Some anthologists send their manuscript in order and in sections. Some send a lovely pile of poems and I will suggest an order. This usually involves spreading them all over the floor, making small groups and then knitting the whole thing together. Most anthologies are a bit of both and we often commission a few new pieces too. I will suggest edits to the poems themselves, this mostly happens to new poems but occasionally I will talk to a poet about something that has already been published. It may be that a poem has more impact by being a bit shorter or a line or word might feel out of place, so I will ask them to swap it. It is amazing the difference these small changes can make.

What do you think are the current trends in publishing poetry for children and how has change in the bigger publishing world affected them?

Poetry can respond very quickly to world events and trends. Over the last five years there has been a lot of emphasis on kindness and empathy, on looking after our planet and publishing poetry from under-represented groups.

Have you any poetry writing advice you’d like to share with us?

It doesn’t have to be rude to be funny!

If you are starting out, read all kinds of poetry.

Social media has been brilliant for poets and poetry and there is a wonderful band of lovely poets on Twitter who are well worth a follow.

Which are your personal favourites amongst the books you’ve published?

I could not possibly choose.

Which book was most important in your career as an editor?

So many have been important but The Secret Lives of Teachers by Brian Moses and Tongue Twisters and Tonsil Twizzlers by Paul Cookson were the start of an incredible poetry journey and I am so happy to still be working with Brian and Paul. Read Me: A Poem for Every Day of the National Year of Reading was an absolute blockbuster and the beginning of a decade of Read Me and The Works titles which brought so much poetry and so many poets to a generation of children. Allie Esiri’s brilliant anthologies have opened poetry up to everyone and I am very happy indeed to have just published The Big Amazing Poetry Book which contains 52 weeks of poetry from 52 brilliant poets, and stunning illustrations by Chris Riddell, to celebrate the first 30 years of the list.

Gaby Morgan: Publishing Magic

Even after almost 30 years, I am still grateful and delighted on a daily basis that I get to make and publish poetry books with brilliant, inspiring poets and editors.

At Macmillan Children’s Books we currently publish around ten poetry titles a year – we publish titles for moments and events, like International Women’s Day, the Football World Cup and Remembrance Day, books that will particularly be enjoyed in schools and big gift books for Christmas.

I am lucky enough to get sent a lot of ideas for poetry collections, and I love talking to poets about them and exploring how we might be able to publish in the best way. There is a kind of publishing magic that happens when just the right theme is matched with the perfect angle or twist. I have published at least 20 books of football poems, 10 books of Christmas poems and 30 books of school poems, but it is the extra something, the hook that a poet or anthologist brings that makes all the difference, to ensure that we are not walking over the same ground again and again. It means that I can sell the idea to our in house teams, so that they can sell the idea to bookshops and in turn the retailers can sell them to customers. It is that magic that makes children choose them.

I love this poem which is by Paul Cookson and features in School Trips:

Short Visit, Long Stay

The school trip was a special occasion

But we never reached our destination

Instead of the Zoo

I was locked in the loo

On an M62 Service Station.

Once we have our idea and the book is acquired the anthologist contacts a wide group of poets, shares the concept with them and asks for submissions. For a 60 poem collection an anthologist will usually send me around 80 poems to look at. I love reading these manuscripts – every anthologist has a particular style or voice that comes through in the story they tell with the poems. Some manuscripts are perfect, but mostly they take a bit of tweaking as we try different running orders and call in a few more poems to fill any gaps. Anthologists weave their books together with great skill, and sometimes that might mean leaving out some beautiful pieces that don’t quite fit and instead searching out pieces that chime in the right way. We may have to reshuffle a book to keep it within its permissions budget and last-minute changes can often lead to stunning new discoveries.

Some books evolve dramatically – Chris Riddell’s Poems to Save the World With started off as a hymn to the environment and kindness in a strange post-Brexit world, but then Covid happened mid-edit and it became about hope, consolation. It includes this beautiful poem by Nikita Gill:

Kindness

And maybe it is easier to learn kindness in these times.

When the whole world is like a small child with a fever,

trying her very best to make herself feel better.

Maybe we find our unity in the near-losing of everything.

Where we have no choice but to depend upon each other.

This is what it takes to realise we are in this together.

A man helps someone he dislikes because they are in danger.

A neighbour delivers groceries to everyone ill on her street.

Old friends forgive each other and stop acting like they are strangers.

Maybe this time, this is what the revolution looks like.

People helping each other despite their differences.

Understanding truly, that without the aid of others,

we would be all alone in this.

Pick up an anthology today – see the world from different perspectives and from different periods of history, meet some new poets, listen to the anthologist’s voice singing, bookmark a favourite and send one to a friend.

Gaby Morgan

Gaby Morgan is an Editorial Director at Macmillan Children’s Books and proud curator of the Macmillan Children’s Poetry List. She has compiled many bestselling anthologies including Read Me and Laugh: A Funny Poem for Every Day of the Year, Poems from the First World War, Poems for Love, Fairy Poems – which was short-listed for the CLPE Award – and A Year of Scottish Poems.

National Poetry Day, Poetry Words and Pictures

Chris Riddell: Words and Pictures

Chris Riddell

As one of the world’s most admired crafters of illustrated work for children and adults and the political cartoonist for The Observer, Chris Riddell was Children’s Laureate 2015-2017 and in 2019 was awarded an OBE for his services to children’s literature. Alongside his own iconic Ottoline and Goth Girl series, he has illustrated the work of many other writers, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, to be published on 15th October 2020. His middle-grade fantasy series The Cloud Horse Chronicles: Guardians of Magic will be published in paperback and Poems To Save The World With, Chris’s third poetry anthology by Macmillan Children’s Books, is available now.

Editorial Director

Gaby Morgan: Cats

Cats

I spent a long time thinking about what this blog would be about – most of it thinking about poems of hope and consolation, and some of it thinking about poems about spring, but in the end it turned out that what I was writing about was cats. I have two cats who are fond of me, but not each other, and both well into middle age. They have been very attentive while I have been at home. The Orange Cat sits by my computer as I work, next to me on the sofa as I read and follows me around in the garden digging up all of the things I have just planted. The Blue Cat – asks for food and sleeps on my bed. We serve our purpose for him.

I have enjoyed seeing all the photos and videos of other people’s pets on social media and during work video calls. I probably know more about my author’s pets than any other part of their lives, and the very first author pet that I met belonged to Charles Causley. He had a magnificent ginger cat called Rupert. Rupert was an excellent correspondent and I still have photos and postcards that he sent me. When I was compiling Read Me: A Poem for Every Day of the Year Charles suggested that I include a poem by his friend A. L. Rowse called The White Cat of Trenarren. It is sublime and begins:

‘He was a mighty hunter in his youth

At Polmear all day on the mound, on the pounce

For anything moving, rabbit or bird or mouse –

My cat and I grow old together.’

Charles wrote about cats too – from I Had A Little Cat in which our narrator takes his cat Tim Tom Tay to market to sell but ends up bringing him home again:

‘But when the people came to buy

I saw such a look in Tim Tom’s eye

That it was clear as clear could be

I couldn’t sell Tim for a fortune’s fee.’

To In Sam Remo about Edward Lear’s cat Foss:

‘Deep in the garden of the Villa Tennyson,

Under a Fig tree, end of the orange walk

(Where, in his life, he’d often sprawl and snooze)

Lies the good gatto Foss, for sixteen years

Daily companion of Edward Lear.’

I was lucky enough to work on a few of Robert Westall’s books – and happily look after Blitzcat and The Machine Gunners to this day. Robert loved cats and always had several – he wrote in a letter to a friend ‘Cats to me are one of life’s great and certain plusses. When I get angry with God I can forgive him because he made cats – a divine and beautiful joke.’ He put together Cats Whispers and Tales: A Treasury of Stories and Poems as a tribute to them. This was also the book that introduced me to the magnificent Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart, which begins ‘For I will consider my cat Jeoffry’,

‘For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.

For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.

For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.

For he can swim for life.

For he can creep.’

… and Pangur Bán (the scholar and his cat), an old Irish poem, written in the ninth century at or around Reichenau Abbey. I like to imagine the monk hard at work illuminating a manuscript with his white cat looking on. It begins:

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

And ends:

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade;

I get wisdom day and night

Turning darkness into light.’

I would love to hear what your favourite cat poems are.

Gaby Morgan

Gaby Morgan is an Editorial Director at Macmillan Children’s Books and proud curator of the Macmillan Children’s Poetry List. She has compiled many bestselling anthologies including Read Me and Laugh: A Funny Poem for Every Day of the Year, Poems from the First World War, Poems for Love, Fairy Poems – which was short-listed for the CLPE Award – and A Year of Scottish Poems.

Children's Poetry Editor

Gaby Morgan: In Praise of Anthologies

In Praise of Anthologies

1993 was an interesting year. Bill Clinton became the 42nd President of the USA. Sleepless In Seattle was released. Three members of One Direction were born and Macmillan Children’s Books published two slim anthologies, Doin Mi Ed In – Rap Poems by David Orme and Martin Glynn, and ‘Ere We Go! Football Poems by David Orme, launching a poetry list that is still going strong twenty-five years later. They introduced an exciting new band of very lovely poets to the world and I am so very lucky to be working with them all half a lifetime later. These were collections written for kids rather than at them and introduced them to a wide range of themes viewed from all kinds of different angles.

The biggest revelation that first year was Glitter When You Jump – Poems Celebrating the Seven Ages of Women by Fiona Waters. It was the most astonishing thing I had ever read and introduced me to ‘Phenomenal Woman’ by Maya Angelou and ‘Warning’ by Jenny Joseph.

Over the years I have read an awful lot of anthologies and was delighted to find that you often can hear the anthologists ‘voice’ in a collection. Brilliant anthologists such as Fiona Waters and Anne Harvey weave the most fascinating stories with incredible skill. When Roger McGough delivered the manuscript for Sensational he had written poem titles at the bottom of each page and I could very clearly see how each poem inspired the next – it was such a delight to follow his thoughts.

After many years of learning from these masters I was lucky enough to be asked to compile anthologies starting with Read Me: A Poem for Every Day for the National Year of Reading.

In my youth I spent days on end compiling the perfect mixed tape. A single song was often the spark for an entire C90. I crafted the perfect collection of summery songs, a tape to impress a new love or even one full of please-stay-in-the-friend zone songs. I still use these mixed tape skills today and that is how I compile anthologies. You have to have album tracks or the hit singles don’t shine. For people who dip and browse you need a very strong beginning and end. You need enough familiar poems – ‘Daffodils’! – for people to feel comfortable and enough brand-new to make people look beyond the collection. You start to tell a story and then the poems suggest themselves.

Poems pop into my head and bring their friends with them…

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by W. B. Yeats, ‘I hear it in the deep heart’s core’,

‘Beattie is Three’ by Adrian Henri, ‘How her fist fits my palm/A bunch of consolation’,

‘The White Cat of Trenarren’ by A.L. Rowse, ‘My cat and I grow old together’,

‘Let No One Steal Your Dreams’ by Paul Cookson, ‘Your only limit is the sky’.

They are joined by poems that I have heard performed such as ‘Dear Hearing World’ by Raymond Antrobus, ‘I have left Earth in search of an audible God’, or poems that I have come across on social media like ‘Saltwater’ by Finn Butler, ‘Everyone who terrifies you is 65 per cent water’ – look them up, they will bring you joy!

The world has changed enormously in the past quarter century and our poetry list has followed the curve of the earth and the signs of the times. We have published a wide range of poetry titles including landmark anthologies such as The Works: Every Kind of Poem You Will Ever Need for the Literacy Hour chosen by Paul Cookson for a new primary curriculum in 2000. Books to echo trends in popular culture like pirates and wizards, or to reflect upon historical events such as the 50th anniversary of the moon landings and the centenary of the end of WWI. To mark sporting events like the Football World Cup or the Olympics; or delve deeper to demonstrate hope and light in challenging times with poetry about extraordinary women, poetry promoting empathy and tolerance, poetry that celebrates our history and heritage and great big gift anthologies which celebrate poetry itself.

Poetry is powerful stuff – from nursery rhymes, to song lyrics, to poetry shared on social media to verse novels. We turn to poems to soothe or rally, to praise, to celebrate, to comprehend, to grieve, to shout ‘I love you’ or to pick ourselves up when it seems impossible – they are words for life.

Gaby Morgan

Gaby Morgan is an Editorial Director at Macmillan Children’s Books and proud curator of the Macmillan Children’s Poetry List. She has compiled many bestselling anthologies including Read Me and Laugh: A Funny Poem for Every Day of the Year, Poems from the First World War, Poems for Love, Fairy Poems – which was short-listed for the CLPE Award – and A Year of Scottish Poems.