May 12th, CHICAGO — The Poetry Foundation is pleased to announce that poet J. Patrick Lewis will serve as the nation’s third Children’s Poet Laureate: Consultant in Children’s Poetry to the Poetry Foundation for a two-year tenure. The award, which includes a $25,000 cash prize, aims to raise awareness that children have a natural receptivity to poetry and are its most appreciative audience, especially when poems are written specifically for them.

“Pat’s many books bring great joy to young readers—the future of poetry,” said Poetry Foundation president John Barr. “He has profuse gifts as a poet—with wordplay, humor, and technical facility—and truly loves writing for and to children. To say that in children’s poetry Pat has found his calling is no mean thing because he has excelled in so many other walks of life: scholar, economist, and author. What Pat Lewis brings to the office of Children’s Poet Laureate is a life fully lived and, of course, tremendous joy for his craft and audience.”

The author of more than 50 books of poetry for children, Lewis began his career as an academic; he taught in the departments of business, accounting, and economics at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, until 1998, when he left to devote himself to writing full time. His books for children include Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles; The Last Resort; The Shoe Tree of Chagrin; and A Hippopotamusn’t: And Other Animal Poems. His children’s poetry has appeared in Highlights for Children, Cricket, and Ranger Rick, among many other places, and his writing has been widely anthologized. His contributions to children’s literature have been recognized with the 2011 Poetry Award from the National Council of Teachers of English and the Ohioana Awards’ 2004 Alice Louise Wood Memorial Prize. His first book of poetry for adults, Gulls Hold Up the Sky: Poems 1983–2010, was published in 2010. A father of three and grandfather of five, he visits more than 30 elementary schools a year, keynotes at literature conferences, and presents teachers’ workshops on introducing poetry in the classroom.

Findings from the Poetry Foundation’s seminal research study, Poetry in America, demonstrate that a lifelong love for poetry is most likely to result if cultivated early in childhood and reinforced thereafter. During his laureateship, Lewis will give two major public readings for children and their families, teachers, and librarians. He will also serve as an advisor to the Poetry Foundation on children’s literature and may engage in a variety of projects and events to help instill a love of poetry among the nation’s youngest readers. The Poetry Foundation made the appointment with input from a panel of experts in the field of children’s literature.

**This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted at Jama Rattigan’s alphabet soup – head on over.

And do take a look at the Booktrust Children’s Books website. It contains a veritable treasure trove of  information and resources. Something that really caught my eye was the Booktrust Online Writer in Residence program, currently featuring Nii Ayikwei Parkes.

Born in 1974 in the UK, and raised in Ghana, Parkes writes poetry, short stories, articles, songs and, sometimes, rap for all ages.  He was the children’s poet in residence at the Brighton Festival in 2007, has led storytelling sessions at the Southbank Centre and British Museum, and his poem Wrong Side has been memorized by hundreds of pupils across the UK. For older readers, Parkes has written three poetry chapbooks and is currently working on a collection of poetry for schools.  A socio-cultural commentator and advocate for African writing, Nii has led forums internationally, currently runs an African Writers’ Evening series program in London, and has established the Writer’s Fund in Ghana to promote writing among the country’s youth. In 2007 he was awarded Ghana’s National ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy.

Click here to read  Nii’s  Booktrust Writer in Residence blog!

If you are or have been a youth member of the society and have a published book or pamphlet which you would like us to feature, please email us the details along with a photo of yourself, the book cover image and a link to where the books can be purchased, to: hhopkins@poetrysociety.org.uk with “Youth Members Library” in the title bar.

This is a wonderful way to commemorate this year’s hundredth anniversary of the Foyle Young Poets Award and will hopefully prove to be as inspiring as the competition itself. We’ll let you know when it’s up and running. You can read this year’s winning entries here.

Alligator pie, alligator pie,

If I don’t get some I think I’m gonna die.

Give away the green grass, give away the sky,

But don’t give away my alligator pie.

Many a child, including my own, has gone to a Lee reading to shout out with glee the end word rhymes to this famous poem.  Indeed, Mr. Lee encourages it.  “I never realized how soon a child can take part in “doing poems.”  A two year old will join in, if you pause at the rhyme-word and let him complete it.  Usually it will be the familiar rhyme, but if you’re making up new verses you’ll be surprised what he thinks of.  Try starting a verse “Alligator juice … ”

Lee’s intent was to create a book of rhymes for children that departed from the old English nursery rhymes he grew up with.  He wanted rhymes for children in the context they lived in as Canadians.  But not without being playful, of course!  My children love Lee’s wordplay with Canadian place names — for instance, this one on our home town.

Someday I’ll go to Winnipeg

To win a peg-leg pig.

But will a peg-leg winner win

The piglet’s ill got wig?

Is there poetry about your town or the place you live?  Is there a way to make word play with its name that will make your kids laugh out loud and think about where they live in a new and lively word-conscious way? Do tell!

those with children at the ends

of their arms, [are] small versions of themselves brightly

inflating as they drain down,

as though they’d opened a vein in their wrists and

out poured blood taking the shape of a child

pulling them by the hand:

Parents are those, the poet says,”going invisible, sucked up the straws/of six year old arms, diving/inside small skins,/starting over again, small.”  That starting over again, the re-seeing that comes with being a parent is something that Gifts attempts to bring to the reader.  Look Mommy, Tregebov seems to say with this collection, poems especially for you.

Today’s Poetry Friday host is The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Although there are now several of Hoshino’s books translated into English, the one I have is Road of the Tinkling Bell published in 1990 (trans. Kyoko and Gavin Bantock.)  It contains a sampling of Hoshino’s poetry, painting and essays.  The writings are simple and heartfelt, easily appreciated and understood by children and adult alike.  What I like about Hoshino’s work is the raw and naked wonder he expresses towards the natural world and his humble expressions of human vulnerability and weakness.  In “Cyclamen,” he writes:

I decided today

to do nothing

The flowers

seem much closer somehow.

Road of the Tinkling Bell is illustrated with Hoshino’s own paintings which are strikingly well-crafted images of flowers and natural scenes.  The pleasure of reading the verse goes hand-in-hand with the remarkable illustrations.  In the original works, verse and illustration went together mouth-painted on stiff boards used for calligraphy.  Such is the love of the Japanese for this remarkable artist, that a museum exists for his work in Gunma, Japan.  However, one need not go there to be inspired by the simple, gracious words of a poet whose calling is genuine and deeply spiritual.

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Wild Rose Reader.

The seasons are often written about in poetry of every language.  This past summer, I stumbled on a children’s poetry book at a library cast-off sale.  It is called Seasons and is edited by the master anthologist, Alberto Manguel.  Manguel has selected poetry from all over the world and of different periods and languages that note, in some way, the seasons.  The book is illustrated by Japanese Canadian artist Warabe Aska who has a playful way of engaging the childish imagination with his pictures.  Often embedded in his colorful drawings are hidden pictures of animals or people.   My daughter delights in finding these images and this activity enhances her appreciation of the book’s contents.  For winter, there is this lovely poem by eleventh century Japanese court lady Sei Shonagon:

Snow

As though pretending to be blooms

The snowflakes scatter in the winter sky.

Accompanying the text, is Aska’s picture of a popcorn vendor in the park on a snowy day.  Popcorn, blooms — all are lovely metaphors, visual and literary, for snowflakes.  And so did my daughter and I feast our eyes this year on popcorn puffs and garden blooms in the otherwise dreary skies of November.

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted at Lisa’s blog…

Another poetry book I tried out on my younger child was Rascally Rhymes by Jordan Troutt, illustrated by Sarah Preston-Bloor.  This book, also an alphabet one, takes names and makes ‘rascally rhymes’ with them.  There’s Ian who eats “worms and toads/and rocks and snails/a la mode.” or Gillian who “stomps like a gorillian.”  After we finished reading this book, my daughter and I went through all the names and tried to see if we knew anyone with the same name.  That was fun!  Palimpsest Press, who publishes this book, is now offering a contest on their blog for children to makes rhymes.  Reading this book definitely had an effect on my daughter.  While sorting laundry together the other night, she held up a sock and said “Mom, this sock doesn’t have a rhyme!”

The title comes from a short, thought-provoking poem by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Words

Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them,
Fair the fall of songs
When the singer sings them.
Still they are carolled and said -
On wings they are carried -
After the singer is dead and the maker buried.

Set both at the beginning and the end of the anthology, this poem brings the book full circle and each time I read it I feel I am peeling off another layer of meaning – perhaps also because of the other poems in the anthology we’ve read together in the meantime. McGough has indeed been the right person to ring this ring of words – there are poems about everything under the sun, from echoes to ghosts to a cat spinning in a washing machine – all apparently very disparate but all in harmony with each other in creating delightful surprises with words – like Thomas Hood’s “No“, so readable and “modern”, yet Hood lived from 1789-1845! McGough, however, doesn’t give any extraneous information beyond the actual poem apart from the name of the poet – so in a sense it is the perfect introduction for enquiring minds to delve into poetry.

Kitamura’s black and white illustrations shift their style subtly to the poetry – and sometimes add an extra layer of meaning – so for example, June Crebbin’s shape poem “Kite” about a kite getting stuck in a tree is stuck in a tree! It is no surprise when you look deeper into the illustrations to learn that Kitamura won the UK’s prestigious National Art Library Illustration Award for The Ring of Words in 1999.
And so we return to the ring of words and Naoshi Koriyama’s beautiful poem “Unfolding Bud”: yes, you do need to allow poetry the time to unfold -

“Revealing its rich inner self, As one reads it
Again
And over Again.”

And I can see that we will either be hogging this book from the library for a while or we’ll have to go out and get our own copy…

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by The Well Read Child – and as always there’s plenty on offer…