Rachel Rooney – Children's Poetry Summit

Janetta Otter-Barry: Poetry and Illustration

Poetry and Illustration – optional extra or indispensable ingredient?

I’ve been thinking about the role of illustration in children’s poetry…. As a publisher it can be tempting not to include pictures, particularly in a collection for older children, but I strongly believe that illustration adds hugely to the enjoyment and understanding of poetry for all ages.

Take the three Otter-Barry Books new August titles….

In Belonging Street Mandy Coe illustrates her own poems, creating a special relationship between words and pictures. In First Haircut Mandy describes a dragon-claw comb, but then surprises us with a fully grown dragon!In City Seed Song the seeds become children reaching for the sky as they celebrate a new green world. Other pictures offer revelations or playful hints that help us decode puzzles and answer questions.In Dear Ugly Sisters, Laura Mucha’s exciting debut, Lithuanian illustrator Tania Rex provides stylish, contemporary pictures, reflecting the many moods of the poems. It was her decision to establish a narrative thread by following one child through the pages, providing interesting links for the reader. How Long Until I Can See My Mum, addressing the plight of refugee children in the US, is poignantly visualised and the same child features over the page in I Am Brave, her fears now depicted as a crocodile – but one that can be banished. The pictures and poems work perfectly together, keeping the reader engaged and eager for more.Joseph Coelho’s The Girl Who Became a Tree, a story told in poems for 12 plus, (27 August), could arguably have been published without illustration content – but what a loss that would have been. Visually, there is so much to explore and respond to, as Daphne confronts the loss of her father and enters the dark magic of the forest.Her journey from isolation and grief to acceptance and new beginnings is beautifully captured by Kate Milner’s pen and ink drawings.

Images of trees, branches, leaves, roots, draw us ever closer to Daphne – and to that other Daphne from the Greek myth, who also plays an important part in this story and whose illustrations are identifiable as white on black.

There’s no doubt that the extraordinary pictures deepen our understanding of this brilliant verse novel.

In Spring 21 we present three collections for Key stage 2 that all have hugely important contributions from illustrators. For Val Bloom’s eagerly awaited Stars with Flaming Tails, (publishing January 2021) we chose Ken Wilson Max to illustrate, pairing two famous creative practitioners of colour in a wide-ranging tour-de-force, underpinned by verbal and visual diversity.

Weird, Wild and Wonderful – the poetry world of James Carter is an important showcase for James’s most admired and requested poems plus new work, and the incredible verve, wit and energy of Neal Layton’s illustrations make these poems almost leap off the page!

Publishing for Mental Health Awareness Week in May, Being Me, Poems about Thoughts, Feelings and Worries, is a ground-breaking collaboration between Liz Brownlee, Matt Goodfellow and Laura Mucha. New illustrator Victoria Jane Wheeler‘s quirky drawings play a vital role here, sensitively visualising the feelings expressed in the verses with empathy and a light touch.

Lastly, in July, we publish Rachel Rooney’s first teen collection, Hey Girl. Rachel’s son, Milo Hartnoll, illustrates, his powerful and empathetic graphic images perfectly capturing the girl’s inner journey as she grows up through the book.

So yes, I’m more than ever convinced that illustrations bring poetry alive in amazing, unexpected ways. They welcome, challenge, reassure, explain and inspire – and I believe they deserve to be at the heart of every children’s poetry collection.

Janetta Otter-Barry

Janetta Otter-Barry is the founder and publisher of Otter-Barry Books, an award-winning independent children’s publisher with a focus on diversity and inclusion. Otter-Barry publish picture books, young fiction, graphic novels and information books as well as an acclaimed poetry list. The first books were published in May 2016, since when six poetry titles have been shortlisted for the prestigious CLiPPA award. Otter-Barry Books.

Poet and Educator

Rachel Rooney: Poetry: A Changing Relationship

Poetry as Parent

Books, particularly poetry collections, were a real comfort to me in what was otherwise a rather austere childhood. I was an insular child who’d taught myself to read before starting school. And as the fifth of six children, all born within 9 years of each other and raised by a very unmaternal mother, it wasn’t surprising that literature became a kind of parental substitute. Reading poetry lead to attempts at writing it, though I never shared my efforts at home or school. Below is the last poem I’d written as a child, aged 13. I still have it on scrap paper somewhere.

The sky at night is like a precious stone,

studded with flecks of silver and a pearl.

Surrounded, even though I am alone.

Covered, like an unprotected girl.

It shows some technical promise and a pithy allusion to a darker subtext. But after this, I drifted away from writing towards music culture. Other than an appreciation of the odd song lyric, it would be another 27 years before I thought of poetry again.

Poetry as Lover

In my 40th year, I chanced upon a weekly class, Writing for Children with Roger Stevens. We spent a term studying poetry where I revisited and appreciated its otherness and the space it gave for self-reflection. Life had become difficult around that time and writing gave me a much needed sense of control and an alternative, positive focus. It hooked me in and soon poetry became my obsessive love interest.

Although I knew I wanted to write and publish poetry for children, I was driven to expand my understanding of it, so spent the following three years focusing on writing courses, workshops and residential weeks. As my writing developed, my personal and emotional life came apart. But poetry was both the catalyst to initiate productive change, and the tool to navigate through those changes.

Long story short, I acquired an agent, Caroline Walsh, who helped place my first collection, The Language of Cat, with Janetta Otter-Barry at Frances Lincoln. And I became part of a new wave of children’s poets emerging alongside renewed publisher and educational interest that continues to grow and flourish today.

Poetry as Boss

Strange as it may seem, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have to ‘work’ to promote my book. I hadn’t considered much beyond the writing of the poems. But I was edged into the limelight when my first collection won the CLPE Award. Public performances terrified me and marketing my work felt alien, but somehow I’ve managed to muddle my way through for long enough to have two more collections (both CLIPPA shortlisted) under my belt. While I’m incredibly grateful for the reception my poetry has had, I can’t help but hold an ambivalence to the job description of Poet. I’m quite protective of my relationship with poetry, viewing it more as mother or lover rather than allowing it to act as my employer.

My next (and likely final, collection) Hey, Girl! is out next year, and is one I’m hoping will speak for itself. It’s pitched at an older readership – early adolescence upwards, and is unapologetically Asperger-ish and female-orientated. It contains poems I’ve written over the last ten years which are part-autobiographical, part epistolary in nature. It marks a natural return to where I’d left off as a young teen and feels somewhat like an ending – but in a good way.

Here’s the title poem.

Hey, girl!

You’re a miracle, already.

What are the odds a cluster of cells

could grow human from a mother’s womb

and arrive in a bright world, blinking and blue.

That was you.

Hey, girl!

Remember, you had the power

to commando crawl over sharp bricks,

risk unsteady steps in hard, new shoes,

turn upside-down on swings for the view.

That was you.

Hey, girl!

You’re simply a sacred being-machine.

No body is perfect but you are perfectly yours.

Hold fast to this thought if others try to undo it.

I am sending this and a kiss (or two).

I was you.

Rachel Rooney

Rachel Rooney‘s latest picture book The Problem with Problems, illustrated by Zehra Hicks and published by Andersen, is out now. Her crossover poetry collection, Hey, Girl! is to be published by Otter-Barry Books in 2021.

Children's Poet

Rachel Rooney: Finding the Sweet Spot

Finding the Sweet Spot

Much of what we call poetry written for children might more accurately be termed as verse; words which engage and entertain the reader, written in regular rhythm and with full end-rhymes. It’s a what you read is what you get type of experience. There’s a pleasure to be had from reading or hearing well-crafted verse that scans as it intends and that uses language in deft, comforting or amusing ways.

Children are particularly drawn to the reading, listening and performing of verse. Its predictable aural patterns tend to lodge in their memory, too. But it is much harder for them to write effectively. The technical skills needed to maintain a coherent idea through extended rhyme and rhythm is tricky for all but the most practised and enthusiastic junior poet. Happily, I was that kind of child. The following poem was written by my 11 year old self about the bus journey I took to school. I’d never shown it to anyone, but kept it safe, eventually including it in my second collection, for reader interest. It’s not particularly good poetry, or even ‘Poetry’ for that matter – it’s simply verse that was relatively crafted for its time.

The 20a Bus

In the line you hear a chatter

Up and down a clatter, clatter.

Noisy schoolgirls scream and shout

pushing in and pushing out.

Down the street the red bus trundles.

Girls surge forward all in bundles.

On at last, but what a rush

Banged my elbows in the crush.

‘I don’t know what it’s coming to’

said the lady with big buttons, who

had a habit to pursue

the trivial things young children do.

And when the bus stops in the street

I kick her underneath the seat

And when the lady stops her chat

I pull the cherries from her hat.

Poetry in its purer form, is a more exploratory art. It’s a voyage of discovery into the unknown. Its aim is to alter our perceptions and to linger in our mind beyond its reading. We might return to these poems and find new or deeper meaning from them.

The writing of such poetry raises different technical questions. How can we ensure musicality without necessarily relying on the tools of strict metre and end-rhyme? How do we utilise line breaks or the space on the page for full effect? What ‘stepping stones’ (images, concepts, concrete details etc) will we put in place to guide the reader through the reading of it? How subtle the inference and how abstract the ideas, given the poem’s intended audience?

I’m a poet who enjoys all the challenges that writing for varying ages brings, from crafting a jaunty rhyming picture book text through to (almost) ‘adult’ poetry. But I’ve always been particularly interested in the elusive sweet spot between worlds; the poem written for children, that has a surface lyrical simplicity but which offers up a more subtle interpretation for the older reader. Or the poem that pitches itself perfectly in content & complexity between the tail end of childhood and early adult readership.

And occasionally, I stumble across poetry written with the adult in mind, that a child reader might possibly access and relate to. The following short poem by Esther Morgan, is a personal favourite for this reason. It’s superficially simple, and could (almost) have been written by a child. And that is part of its mastery.

The Long Holidays

The day stretches ahead – nothing but

grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky grass and sky

as far as the eye can see

nothing but sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass sky and grass

and the wind galloping hard over the fields

like a riderless horse.

Esther Morgan

If you’re interested, here’s a wonderful close reading of the poem in a blogpost by the poet George Szirtes.

Rachel Rooney

Rachel’s most recent collection A Kid in My Class (Illustrated by Chris Ridell, Otter-Barry) was shortlisted for the CLiPPA and has just won the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award for poetry 2019. A rhyming picture book The Problem with Problems, illustrated by Zehra Hicks (Anderson) is out March 2020 and a poetry collection aimed for older girls is due in 2021 (Otter – Barry).

CLiPPA Poetry Award

CLiPPA Poetry Award 2019

CLiPPA 2019

A highlight of our year at CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) is the CLiPPA award ceremony which we’ve organised in collaboration with the National Theatre.

The CLPE Poetry Award started 17 years ago, to fill the gap left by the Signal Poetry Award. A list of the winners since then with other information about the award can be found on our Poetryline website.

In 2014 we made the award more high profile, the announcement of the winner being made at the recently opened House of Illustration with a linked poetry trail featuring poems from the shortlisted titles. However, children themselves remained the missing guests at the feast and thin 2015 we began a schools’ shadowing scheme, created resources to help teachers introduce the books to children, and started a partnership with the National Theatre. Thanks to chair of judges Roger McGough commenting that the prize needed a more snappy name, it became the more catchy CLiPPA which stands for Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award.

The relationship with the National Theatre has continues and led to a capacity crowd filling the Lyttelton Theatre this year on Wednesday 3rd July. Our Poetry Show featured the five shortlisted poets; Kwame Alexander for his verse novel Rebound (Andersen Press), Rachel Rooney for her collection A Kid in My Class (Otter-Barry Books), Steven Camden for his collection Everything All At Once (Macmillan Children’s Books), Philip Gross for Dark Sky Park (Otter-Barry Books), and Eloise Greenfield for Thinker: My Puppy Poet and Me (Tiny Owl).

Schoolchildren performed from each of their books, with the proceedings compèred in an inimitable manner by chair of judges, A. F. Harrold, assisted by fellow judges Ruth Awolola, Charlotte Hacking and Susannah Herbert. It has now become a wonderful tradition for Chris Riddell to be seated on the stage, live drawing throughout the event.

The schools chosen to perform were selected from more than 100 videos sent in as part of our shadowing scheme. First on the stage were five children from a Birmingham primary school, one of whom took on the role of the cool dude in Rachel Rooney’s poem ‘Cool’ from A Kid in My Class. Then Rachel herself appeared in disguise as a hamster to perform ‘The Hamster Speaks’ featuring a character who scampers through the pages in Chris Riddell’s accompanying illustrations.

Neither Kwame Alexander nor Eloise Greenfield could be at the ceremony as they live in the USA but both sent video messages with warm greetings and recited respectively from Rebound and Thinker: My Puppy Poet and Me.

Three boys from a Northolt primary school captured the rhythm of the basketball court in their rendition of ‘Air Jordan’ from Rebound while a whole class of 30 children from a primary school in Uxbridge gave a captivating presentation of Eloise Greenfield’s ‘Thinker’s Rap’.

Two girls from a Hertfordshire junior school gave a spine-tingling interpretation of ‘Aleppo Cat’ from Philip Gross’ Dark Sky Park followed by Philip diving deep into his collection subtitled ‘Poems from the Edge of Nature’ to read ‘The Abyss’.

A startling solo performance came from a girl who had travelled from a Norfolk school taking on the dual roles of a child and the blank page staring at her in ‘Anyone’ from Steven Camden’s debut collection Everything All At Once. Steven then shared his heartfelt poem ‘Dear Mum, BTEC’ which is for every young person who wants to convey to their parents and teachers that they need to plough their own furrow and that taking a practical path is equally as valid as an academic one.

One of the great things about the Poetry Show is that it celebrates all of the shortlisted titles. However, by the end of it, the audience is alert to hear the announcement of the winner. This year, the judges chose to highly commend Eloise Greenfield’s Thinker: My Puppy Poet and Me. The accolade of this year’s CLiPPA, though, went to Steven Camden’s Everything All At Once, a book that the judges felt should be given to every child in Year 6 in anticipation of their move to secondary school and the new phase of life into which they will be entering.

The show ended with the announcement of a partnership with National Poetry Day to encourage children to write poems on this year’s theme, Truth. This was presented via a video featuring several poets who had previously won the CLiPPA with their first collection for children, including Joseph Coelho, Karl Nova and Rachel Rooney. Seeing those faces up there was just one of many emotional moments of the day for me, having been associated with the award from the beginning.

It was great this year to witness one of those moments for others. I happened to be sitting next to Gaby Morgan, publisher of the winning book and Steven Camden was on the other side of her. A. F. Harrold prefaced the moment when he announced the winner by mentioning that this poet went by another name as a performer – that of Polarbear – and that was when Steven and Gaby knew their book had won and it was wonderful to feel their delight and emotion.

Ann Lazim

Ann Lazim is the Literature and Library Development Manager at CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) where she has worked for over 25 years. This multi-faceted role includes being the administrator for the CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award). Ann has an MA in Children’s Literature from Roehampton University and is active in IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People).

Children's Poet

Rachel Rooney: Reflections on a Poetry Project

Reflections on a Poetry Project

Several years ago, I happened upon a TV documentary about Limpsfield Grange; a secondary residential and day school for girls with communication and interaction difficulties. My interest was piqued, both as a former SEN teacher and as a parent of someone with an Aspergers diagnosis. Alongside this, the nature of certain girls within the film caught my attention; reminding me somewhat of my former self. Long story short, I returned a year later (with my own relatively unexpected Aspergers diagnosis) to begin an Arts Council-funded autism and poetry project at their school.

There’s a growing recognition of the unique relationship that poetry and (able) autism can hold. Attention to detail, heightened interest in pattern, slantwise thinking, and a desire to communicate that which can’t readily be spoken are just some of the ways that these worlds intersect. I’d wager that a disproportionate number of poets, knowingly or not, are placed somewhere along the autistic spectrum! However, this is not to say the poetry residency itself was a breeze. It took several sessions for groups to settle and fully engage with me. Anxiety, lack of confidence, a resistance to change, and a reluctance to speak in group settings were some of the challenges they might face.

But during my time there, I witnessed definite poetic moments, both in their creative writing and, more importantly, in aspects of personal development. The anxious girl, who leaves the session, only to return in time to successfully complete her poem. The perfectionist who manages to accept that it’s really is okay not to write a satisfying poem that day. The shy student who musters the voice to read her work out, then receiving spontaneous applause from her classmates. These small acts of bravery help to build resilience and self-confidence.

Almost all poetry demands an emotion, but it also requires the control of that emotion. Therein lies its power. To illustrate, here’s a poem written by one pupil, in our last free-write session:

Nightmare

(on losing an elephant lucky charm)

Security waves and slips away
knowing it’s not yet seen.
Sorrow and grief will come around
when I wake up from my dream.

I open it up and look inside.
The empty packet gleams.
My heart begins to shatter
and there’s nothing to be seen.

They don’t quite understand it all,
small as it may seem.
My problem’s large as an elephant
and a drop becomes a stream.

A tiny thing can be so big.
Streams can lead to sea.
I’ll find my way eventually
and wake up from this dream.

That day, the student who’d written this had been very upset. A treasured miniature elephant charm she’d carried around for years had gone missing. At break time I’d noticed she was visibly distressed and I wondered how she’d manage in our workshop later. But I also knew she was a natural poet, one who valued her own creative writing process. So I wasn’t surprised when I was presented with this poem, written in the twenty-minute writing slot that our workshops allowed. Later, in her feedback form she written ‘I liked it because I could say my feelings and writing one of my poems helped me through a difficult time.’

We ended the project with a celebratory recitation from some of the pupils, accompanied by live illustrations, courtesy of Chris Riddell, who’d kindly agreed to donate his time and talent to the day. One the many highlights of the fifteen months there was watching that young poet reading out in a strong clear voice, to a large, appreciative audience. That, for me, is the essence of poetry.

I’m in the process of collating some of their poems to be published in an illustrated booklet Welcome to My World, soon to be available from Limpsfield Grange School. I am also working on a collection of poems in response to my experience there.

Rachel Rooney.com

RacheI Rooney’s poetry collection The Language of Cat, latest edition illustrated by Ellie Jenkins, won the CLPE Poetry Award and was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal. Her second collection My Life as a Goldfish, Illustrated by Ellie Jenkins, was shortlisted for the CLiPPA 2015. Her new book, A Kid in My Class, illustrated by Chris Riddell and published by Otter-Barry Books, has been shortlisted for the CLiPPA 2019. Rachel visits schools for workshops with pupils and has performed her work at festivals and for The Children’s Bookshow. She was Chair of Judges for the CLiPPA 2017 and the Betjeman Poetry Prize.