Children's Poetry Summit

I have now completed the illustrations for a second poetry book for the publisher Otter-Barry Books. The first, “The Poetry World of John Agard”, written by John Agard, was published in July 2025 and won the 2026 CLiPPA Award; “Rapunzel is a Lettuce”, written by Joseph Coelho, will be out on 3rd September this year. A poetry lover, I feel very lucky to...

I have only performed my poem Marble Run once. It’s in my new collection, Poems on Toast, and is a poem that I loved writing. It was created completely differently to the way my process usually works. I can write with purpose and have researched and written poems for themed anthologies, but my usual style is to pick up a pen and a notebook and s...

Starfish are golden stars having a break from the night sky (Rachel)

Writing on location can bring the sort of insights to written work that just aren’t possible in the classroom. Rachel’s idea (above) followed on from an exploration of rock pools where we found stranded starfish waiting for the sea to sweep back in.

Prior to visiting any location equi...

Like so many of us, I’ve spent much of this blistering August watching scorched grass and wildfire warnings scroll across my screen. After a summer this relentlessly hot, asking children to think about the wonder in our world might feel like a big ask, maybe a frivolous one.

It isn’t. Wonder isn’t a fluffy feeling we save for quiet days; it is practical, groundi...

I write poetry for grown ups as well as children, but it occurred to me recently that I have never really written a poem (for grown ups) about being a children’s poet. I have written many words about it, some of them on this blog, but not in a poetic form. So that’s what I’ve now done. Since it is grown ups who read this blog, I am happy, and a bit nervous, to share it wi...