YOU are warmly invited !
… to the NEW Poetry Anthology book launch:
LakeHouse Art Centre, Takapuna
Saturday 25th August 4.30pm
** featuring:
readings by young poets and “wordcore”/music by Midnight Poetry Band
all welcome
BIG Thank you!! to the National Poetry Day 2018 and LakeHouse Art Centre
Please check out our new website
Baxter Basics, Poems for Children by James K Baxter (Steele Roberts Publishers)
How wonderful it is, to have the line that will lead children along the road toward poetic Jerusalem inscribed by the master wordsmith latterly known as Hemi. The poems in this collection date from the early 50s, and were published as The Tree House in 1974. In 1979, Price Milburn produced the poems in separate Baxter Basics booklets in the PM Readalongs series. Steele Roberts brought them together in this modern compendium version in 2008.
What a wonderful way to preserve them, when one’s original school readers become the stuff of half-remembered dreaming. And what a gift to me, as a new librarian at Cannons Creek Library, looking for solid ways to turn kids on to reading and poetry. In a modern world, sometimes vintage turns out to be the most amazing flavour to taste. My familiarity with the poems and affection for the illustrations made it easy to pick up and enthusiastically share.
What do you love about it?
It reminds me of the excitement of learning to read in the days when I did – in the early 1970s. I love the way it introduces unmistakable rhyme schemes that have the kids punching the air to tell me they have noticed them. I love the way its economy of line has met the sort of playful typographic design that leads us to taking exactly the right size bites to best serve each line.
Which poems really hook you?
I like the balance and sway of “I’m A Tree” – ‘I’m a man out walking in the thick green bush; I can’t see the sun, So I push, push, push! / I’m a boy with a banjo, Clever as they come; I pick up my banjo and I strum, strum, strum!’ (And who wouldn’t want to be the boy with the banjo and the fans, as Lynley Dodd sees them.)
Speaking of the illustrations, Dodd’s fine work – along with that of Judith Trevelyan, Dawn Johnston, and Ernest Papps – hark nostalgia now, although only ‘The Firemen’ would have seemed vintage when first published. The renderings of home, town, bush/forest, beach/sea and sparse traffic in uncrowded cities combine with the words to make me feel like the world is my oyster, and that I can transport myself into any form of being from nature, to occupation, to location.
Have you seen children reading it?
This is probably my most-shared poetry book, and it is always well received. The offering of a first line or two is easily transformed by the invitation to turn Baxter’s observations into one’s own.
What three words sum up the book?
Vintage, transformative, classic. (I consider any book capable of turning us into poets via uncluttered example transformative!)
Can you think of a book it is similar to?
Margaret Mahy’s rhyme-alicious “My Wonderful Aunt” shared a similar publishing history, in that it was served up as a compendium of stories after years of being loved as individual readers. There is something quite special about honouring ‘the reader’ – seen so much as a tool by those doing the teaching, but with the capacity to lodge themselves very deeply into the psyches of those making reading revelations with them.
Bee Trudgeon is the Porirua Children’s Librarian Kaitiaki Pukapuka Tamariki. She is a writer, strummer, storyteller, dancer in the dark, film buff, perpetual student, and the mother of a couple of big kids who still love bedtime stories. Often spotted urban long-distance walking wearing headphones and a ukulele, she lives in a haunted house in Cannons Creek, and works wherever there is an audience.
Check out the Poetry Box August challenge here
I am
SO SO SO
l OO k i n g
forward
to this
Do come and write poems with me in the fabulous Dorothy Butler’s Children’s Bookshop
This wonderful poem is about Adrienne’s local diary owner and the way he was treated so badly. I love this poem so much. The poem is from All of us, a collection of poems around the themes of migration and refugees, by Adrienne Jansen and Carina Gallegos, to be published in October by Landing Press.
Adrienne Jansen has been listening to stories of newcomers to New Zealand, and writing those stories with them, most of her life. This poem, “Next year”, is one of those tiny stories. She lives in Titahi Bay, near Wellington, and writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry.
Check out the Poetry Box August challenge here
The wonderful poet Glenn Colquhoun had fun making up a nursery rhyme. You can listen to it here.
So I thought it would be fun to write poems that play with nursery rhymes.
They can be long or short.
They can rhyme or not rhyme.
They can use the nursery rhyme we know and love but with different words.
They can take a nursery-rhyme character and invent a new story.
They might change the beginning or the ending.
They can make the nursery rhyme take place in New Zealand.
They be funny or surprising or have a hidden message.
You might be in it! Or someone you know.
You might do a nursery-rhyme mash up. More than one in the mix!
h a v e n u r s e r y r h y m e F U N
Deadline: August 28th
Include: your name, age, year and school
Open to: Year 1 to Year 8
Please put Nursery rhyme challenge in email subject line so I don’t MISS it
Send to: paulajoygreen@gmail.com
I will post some favourites on August 31st and have a book for at least one poet
Glenn reads and talks about: ‘A nursery rhyme for Barney Whiterats‘
Glenn Colquhoun is a poet and children’s writer. He works as a GP in Horowhenua.
Watch out for my August challenge inspired by this tomorrow.
The butterfly poems have been such as a popular challenge. Thank you so much for sending me poetry that filled my house with butterflies – it felt like they would lift off my screen and go flying because the language was so bright and lively.
I have a posted a few poems from all the schools – and it was so so hard choosing.
Just because I didn’t pick your poem doesn’t me it wasn’t AMAZING– I just tried to get a variety.
I am sending a copy of my book The Letterbox Cat to Leona.
AND I got such a gorgeous bunch of illustrated poems from Raumati School that will brighten your day I am going to post a cluster separately.
Do try my August challenge.
(if I haven’t replied to your poem let me know!)
Lonely Butterfly
Soft wing,
light as feathers.
The butterfly
flies from place
to place.
She lands slowly
on a forget-me-not
and remembers
her mother.
My name is Leona K, 8 years old, Year 5, Selwyn House School
The Butterfly Artist
With her orange
and black wings,
the butterfly draws
the cherry blossom,
with a swan feather.
Runika, age 8, Year 4, Selwyn House School
Butterflies
Fragile wings shimmering
In the morning sky
Coloured as pink
as cotton candy.
Lucy Fraser, age 7, St Andrews Prep
Butterfly poem
The monarch butterfly
swoops down on
the sunny summer
day and eats a drop
of sugar and flies back.
Rose Age 9 Year 4 Fendalton School, Christchurch
Butter flutter
Butterfly flutter
In the summer sun
Their shiny wings
Glow in the sun
Like waves
They are very quiet
Estelle Russell Age 7 St Andrews College Preparatory School
The Arrival of the Butterfly
hanging by a silky thread
she emerges
crumpled wings straighten
delicate as rice paper
light reflects off
her metallic blue wings
fading away at
the blackened edges
flitting among the branches
like petals in the breeze
she lands on my shoulder
whispering secrets in my ear
Olivia L Age: 11 Selwyn House School
Gemma L, Year 8, Adventure School, Wellington
Daniel L, Age 9, Year 5, Adventure School, Wellington
Fluttering Butterflies
I am a beautiful butterfly spreading my wings.
I can taste the sweet sweet honey that I suck up with my very own long straw,
I can smell the scrumdiddlyumptious nectar,
I can hear the thunder on a bad day as I hide under a leaf,
I can see the terrifying toad approaching me as I glide out of reach,
I can feel the petals on a flower as soft as silky silk.
Peggy N Age 9 Westmere School LS6
Butterfly
The butterfly is as delicate as a ballerina.
The butterfly is as strong as a an eagle.
The butterfly is as colourful as confetti.
The butterfly is as stunning as a rose.
The butterfly makes me feel happy when I look at it fluttering in the wind.
The butterfly cautiously dances in the breeze while avoiding a sly frog.
Butterflies are graceful, beautiful and strong.
I wouldn’t mind being a butterfly.
Maddie H Age 9 Westmere School LS6
The Butterfly
A ragged butterfly head peeks out of a chrysalis
after the devastating earthquake
The lonely butterfly flaps its wings feebly
It glides,then lands on a rose
It sucks the delicious nectar
The graceful butterfly finds some others
and flies out of sight –
A sign of hope after the earthquake.
Aaron K Age 10, Fendalton Open-air School
The Butterfly
Every warm summer day,
She spreads her pink wings,
To find some juicy nectar,
From a new yellow flower,
After a day of exploring,
She lays down on her leafy bed,
Thinking about what tomorrow brings.
Zian Age 10 Fendalton Open Air School
26th July 2018
Green leaves on green grass
A flap of a butterfly’s wings is the only sound
The moon is out
The sky is pitch black
Then a huge group of butterflies pass
Butterflies red
Butterflies blue
Butterflies multicoloured too
Butterflies pass over my head
I go to sleep with a butterfly on my nose!
Amy Viles Age: 9 Fendalton Open-Air School
Butterflies
Butterflies flutter by,
like the fluttery buttery bugs they are!
Curly wurly,
diply durly,
soaring
through
skies so blue!
Poppy T, age 10, Kiwi Connection Hub Richmond Road School
Butterflies
The moonlight reflects on the butterflies wings,
The butterfly dances while the morepork sings.
The butterfly is as beautiful as the stars,
They fly, frolic having fun.
They dance in the night,
They dance in the light.
The ballerina of insects.
Florence S, age 11, Hub, Richmond Road School
BUTTERFLY
Butterfly lays eggs
Underneath a leaf
The eggs are really small
The eggs are yellow
Eggs hatch
Red caterpillars wriggle
Feasting on food
Lie down on the leaf and sleep
Yet they wake up and start again
Xavier L, 9 years old, Samoan Unit, Richmond Road School
I am a Butterfly
I am a butterfly and I fly high in the sky
I also crystalise
So I can do some exercise
Sometimes I cry
Then I eat some pie
But I also lie
So I can eat some french fries
Then I apologise
Then do some more exercise
But I also say goodbye
Then I see a cat’s eye
And NOW I say goodbye!!!!
Siena S, 10 years – Samoan Unit, Richmond Road School
Butterfly
butterfly butterfly flying through the trees
butterfly butterfly flapping happily
butterfly butterfly pounced by a tiger!
butterfly butterfly narrow escape
butterfly butterfly lived ever after
Charlie J, Age 8, Fendalton Open Air School
Room 4 at St Francis School visited the butterfly exhibition at Auckland Museum and then did shape poems back in class. Here are a few:
