Posted in World Poetry Day

World Poetry Day!

It’s World Poetry Day! What a fabulous thing as the day turns round the world to know that thousands and thousands of people will be Tweeting, blogging, reading, writing and trying poetic words on their palate!

Poetry has been said to be like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it. But most people turn to poetry on occasions of emotional highs and lows, to express those thoughts with words that are hard to find at those times.

Here’s my fun marmite poem to celebrate the fact that we are all different, but all have a place, on World Poetry Day, and any other day.

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My Mite

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I like my mite,

my mite’s my mate,

it gets my vote

and not my hate,

I like my mite,

but others won’t,

you either like it

or you don’t.

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© Liz Brownlee

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Mites help decompose leaf litter in the woods. Without decomposers to break down all the dead material such as leaves, twigs, animal bodies, and waste materials that animals produce (poo!), there would be no soil. Without soil, nothing would grow. We would starve as there would be nothing to grow our food in, there would be no grass-eating creatures such as cattle, there would be no birds or anything that lives in trees because there would be nothing for trees to live in and no trees, no insects, no flowers… in fact the whole web of life would break down. Decomposers are creatures like bacteria, mites, earwigs, beetles, slugs, wasps, flies, and very importantly, worms.

 

Image by Heidi Elliot on Flikr by CC License.

Young Poets’ Network Poetry Challenge

Young Poets Network have set another poetry competition!

Could you be one of the Bletchley set? Poet So Mayer takes goes into the Bletchley Park archives and invites young poets everywhere to try a number of cleverly coded writing exercises. Write in response to one or more of these, or simply write a poem inspired by the work at Bletchley Park and email Young Poets Network with your work for the chance to be published in an anthology!

Details here.

Posted in Poetry Competition

A-Z Challenge Poetry Competition! #AtoZChallenge

Hidden in the A-Z of Best Children’s Poets there are FOUR poets who don’t exist – their names are the anagrams of real poets on the list, each of whom have written a false bio and a poem for their alter-ego! Guess all four and you stand a chance of winning Apes to Zebras, An A-Z of Shape Poems by Liz Brownlee, Sue Hardy-Dawson and Roger Stevens.

At the end of the A-Z send your entries to poetryfunfactory @ gmail.com. Include your name, the answers, email address and U.K. address. The competition closes on 12 May. Judgement is final. The winner will be informed by email and the result posted here.