Poetry4Kids – Poetry Roundabout

Shauna Darling Robertson: Saturdays at the Imaginarium

Posted on February 12, 2021February 14, 2021 by Liz Brownlee

Step out of your daily grind and into Shauna’s imaginarium – where humdrum is injected with colour, feelings and emotions with clarity, and empathy is just how and where you need it to be. You know those somethings you catch out of the corner of your eye but which disappear when you try to look them in the face? Here they are pinned down and given names.

This book is brimful of fantastical reality, a universe of exploration into worlds of words; words that float and sink and climb and swing, beckon, entice, challenge and sing. Exciting words, gentling words, lit along their paths with Shauna’s delightful sense of humour.

This is a fantastic work in every conceivable way, and what is more inside its covers I have found what is in my opinion THE PERFECT POEM (below) – but you can count on finding your own perfect poem there, too.

Published by Troika and beautifully illustrated by Jude Wisdom, this is definitely a winner for the classroom and home – HIGHLY recommended!

The Dreamcatcher

The old man gave me

this weird looking thing.

A stringy, beady

feathery thing.

A dreamcatcher, he whispered.

Yeah, whatever.

Still, I did as he said,

hung it over my bed

and that very night

I caught my first one

brim-filled

with treasures –

gold, silver, rubies, rings.

Nice and all,

but I’m not what you’d call

huge on jewels

so I held out for another

and sure enough, on night two

I was blessed with adventures –

castles and dragons,

galloping stallions, damsels

in varying degrees of distress.

Come night three, I confess

I was hooked

and from that moment on

I spent most of my days

killing time till day’s end

and then sinking to sleep

and waking at dawn to check my net

for a freshly-snared dream.

Six months in, I’m now the proud owner

of five-hundred-and-fifty-eight.

Some creepy, some soothing

some crazy, some straight.

But lately my dreams feel hemmed in,

suspended up there

in my stringy, beady, feathery thing

so I’ve hatched a plan for their urgent release

and tonight’s the night I’ll let my dreams fly.

Thing is, I’m thinking I might go with them.

So please keep this quiet.

Goodnight

and goodbye.

YorkMix Competition for a Children’s Poem Ends Sunday!

Could you write a poem to amuse, excite or inspire children?

You’ve got until midnight on Sunday to enter a poem into the The YorkMix Competition with a chance of winning first prize of £250, with runner-up prizes of £100, £75 and £50. Judged by Carole Bromley.

Get writing! Here’s the link.

A to Z Challenge 2019

# A to Z Challenge, B is for Liz Brownlee

Posted on April 2, 2019April 26, 2019 by Liz Brownlee

Sue Hardy-Dawson, Me and Roger Stevens after our NSTBA win

The second post is me, because I handily have a surname beginning with B. I write poems for kids and I’m a National Poetry Day Ambassador, a role I take very seriously.

I have my own website, but run this website to showcase all children’s poets and the wonderful work they do to celebrate children’s poetry and everything it encourages, such as empathy, understanding, reading ability, education, etc. The website contains poetry videos for kids, poetry activities for kids, poetry games for kids, everything to do with poetry for young people!

I run the Children’s Poetry Summit Twitter feed, as well as my own, and also the Twitter account for KidsPoets4Climate, supporting our children in their fight for their climate. If you have any suitable sustainability poems, do send them for tweeting! There is also my blog called BetheChange about sustainability for children.

In August, a book of sustainability poems I have written with Matt Goodfellow (link to Matt’s article, What Poetry Offers in the Classroom) and Roger Stevens (link to Roger’s article, Three Simple Steps to Perk Up Your Poems) will be out, called Be the Change – we are all very excited about it!

I also love going into schools, to libraries, performances and literary festivals with all the books’ subjects, but my favourites are animals, rainforest and sustainability readings and workshops.

You might think I’d have no time for writing, but I love writing for children; my books are Animal Magic, Poems on a Disappearing World (about endangered animals), Reaching the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls (about some of the countless women who have shaped history, until now), The Same Inside, Poems about Empathy and Friendship (what it says on the tin), Apes to Zebras, an A-Z of Shape Poems, a book of animal poems in the shapes of the animals they are about, and out on August 8, Be the Change, Poems About Sustainability.

Reaching the Stars won the prestigious NSTBA for poetry in 2017 and Apes to Zebras won it in 2018, with The Same Inside being shortlisted.

Here is my poem for the poetry feast: