This week is all about things I love. When I launched my poetry book The Baker’s Thumbprint this year I said I wrote the poems put of love. That’s not to say it is a book of love poems but I just love writing.
So today I am going to share a book I love. Someone whispered the name of this poet to me recently, so I went on a hunt and now I want to whisper the name to you too! It is really great the way we can share books, the names of authors and titles we love.
The book is called The Language of Cat and other poems. It is written by Rachel Rooney and illustrated by Ellie Jenkins (Frances Lincoln, 2011).
When I read the poems it makes me want to write a poem. Words start buzzing like bees in my head and I just want to get cracking.
I don’t have permission to post a poem but there is a bit from ‘Defending the Title’ in the photo of the back of her book. It is a really cool poem.
Rachel knows how to make words sizzle and swing and snap and pop and sigh and spark on the page (oooh! ‘the clink of the fork on the china dish’).
She plays with words a lot. I love ‘Just Her and the Poet’ where the end of one line is the start of the next ( I want to try this!). But it gets even trickier as the poem ends up back where it started. Here are two lines: ‘The glow of the page, its inky print, / It’s inky print those thinking lines.’
She has a great sense of humour: There is a poem about what people swallow including a lamp post (please don’t try that!)
She has a bouncy imagination: like what it would be like if the world was the size of a pea and the sun was the size of a beach ball?
I especially love her poems about POETRY!
To celebrate this book you might like to try writing a poem using one of Rachel’s titles and i will post my favourites:
‘The Language of Cat’ (I want to do this one!)
‘80% of People Prefer Chips to Poems’ (oh and I want to do this one!)
‘This Modern Monster’
‘The Poem and the Poet’ (and I want to do this one!)
‘Counting Days’
‘Unfair’
‘Three Monkeys’
‘Daisy’s Answer’
‘Question’
Send to paulajoygreen@gmail.com. Include your name, age, year and name of school. You can include the name and email address of your teacher.
Poetry Box 