Hello.
I write books, present radio programmes - (if you come from America, you'd call that hosting radio shows), appear occasionally on TV, visit schools and colleges where I do a one-man show and I lecture and teach in universities on children's literature, reading and writing. I usually call myself a writer and broadcaster, though some people call me a poet and performer. I wrote my first book in 1969, it was a play called Backbone, my first children's book in 1974, a book of poems called Mind Your Own Business and I've been bringing out books pretty well every year since then.
Here's a website that has a complete list of books I've written or edited. There's also an article about me.
Here are some poems by 4S at Greenhill Primary School in Sheffield based partly on my poem, 'The Bathroom Fiddler' in 'Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy'
Breakfast time
I'm the breakfast maker
The breakfast shaker
The breakfast creeper
down the stairs.
Breakfast time...here I come!
Reach for the Cornflakes
No, no the Rice Crispies
No, no the Weetabix
Or shall I have Coco Pops?
Uh oh...the Coco Pops are on the floor.
Uh oh...the dog's here.
Uh oh...he's going to gobble them up.
The dog's going crazy now
Running around in circles
Chasing his tail
Licking his lips.
Smash! Splash!
Milk on the floor
Milk on the dog
Milk on me.
On me.
By the Tigers
Bedtime
I'm the bedtime stopper
The bedtime refuser
The dawdler and the dodger!
When my Mum says
'Go to bed'
'Go to bed!'
'GO TO BED!!!!'
I dawdle up the stairs...really slowly
Sit there for a bit and watch TV
through the crack in the door.
'GO TO BED!!!'
I drag my feet into the bathroom
Play with Dad's hair gel
Put my fake spider in the sink
Draw a shaving foam face on the mirror.
'GO TO BED FOR THE VERY LAST TIME NOW!!!'
Finally, I crawl into bed
And play on my DS!
By the Pumas
The Flicker
I'm the frantic flicker
The fiddling flacker
The best flicker in town.
Hold it steady
Aim...
FIRE!
Hearts stop beating as we watch it go
Soaring through the air
Heads up...heads up
It's going to land
Take cover!
Heads down...Heads down.
'Look out...here comes Miss.'
Act normal.
Rush into your seat
Act normal.
Sit up straight
ACT NORMAL!
'Who flicked a bogey at Susan?'
I say nothing.
'Who flicked a bogey at Susan?'
I still say nothing.
But they all point at me..
They all point at me.
They're pointing at me.
At me.
By the Jaguars
This is my workroom in the series 'Writers' rooms' that runs in the Guardian. The photo is by the great Eamonn MacCabe.
This is a Podcast from the Guardian, when I visited the Hay festival
This is a blog I posted at the Guardian website with some 50 or so comments after it.
Here's a film of a talk I gave at a Liverpool literacy conference.
Me and Tim Rylands.
This is an article called 'My life in travel' in the Independent.
Another couple of months busying about: I've worked with London children as part of the Barbican's 'Can I Have a Word?' project. We wrote poems inspired by one of the most intriguing exhibitions I've ever seen. It was called: 'Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art', and it was full of objects, paintings, photos and installations 'collected by Martians' (!) from humans. I've done shows in Luton Library, St Luke's School in Canning Town, heard wonderful poems from primary schools in Camden at their local secondary Haverstock, announced the Big Picture campaign's Ten Best New Illustrators at the Bologna Children's Book Fair before going on to Rome and Naples to work for the British Council. (Interesting, talking for an hour to fifty Italian children who could hardly speak English!) I entertained some four hundred children at Reading Football Club as part of their 'Reading needs Reading' project, another five hundred or so at the Rose Theatre in Richmond and visited the Cobham International School.
In between, I've done some TV - BBC Four are making three programmes about children's literature and I did some filming for that; I've recorded five stories (not mine) for CBeebies and appeared on 'The Wright Stuff', Matthew Wright's morning chat show on Five, where I now have a regular spot offering advice on children's books to people who call the show. One of the most moving calls came from a woman who said that she was 53 and couldn't read - what should she do? On radio, I appeared on Five Live to argue about apostrophes, I finished off five programmes for Radio 4 about the legacy of Iona and Peter Opie in relation to their work of looking at children's play. On Radio 3, I reviewed a new biography of the poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg and carried on with 'Word of Mouth' for Radio 4, which took me to Kingsford Community School in Beckton, East London where they teach compulsory Mandarin to all of Key Stage 3. How interesting to confront a prejudice on my part when I found that I was surprised that children who don't 'look Chinese' could speak a Chinese language!
The Laureate projects are cooking nicely. The Roald Dahl Funny Prize is up and running, so if you think you've read the funniest book published this year by a British writer, give the publisher a nudge to make sure that it gets entered. I think it's great that Roald Dahl's name is attached to this because he was someone who wrote some of the funniest books ever written for children. I'm also chuffed that the bit of my laureateship devoted to being an 'ambassador for fun with books' has come to fruition. The exhibition, conference and performances about the history and practice of poetry for children going on at the British Library next year is developing beautifully, thanks largely to Morag Styles, while a set of performances under the heading of 'A-Z of Poetry Tour' is carrying on round the country - Liverpool, Edinburgh, Dundee and Bath - and more.
Apologies if you know about this, but could I recommend a folder called 'Family Reading Campaign' produced by Read On, the National Reading Campaign, financed by the old DES, and organised by the National Literacy Trust? My only quibble: why isn't such a document backed up with as much force, Ofsted-checking and publicity as the government puts into the Literacy Strategy, SATs and Synthetic Phonics? I feel a speech coming on called 'The Mysterious Politics of Which Literacy Horses the Government Really Backs and Which Ones It Just Pays For!'
Since writing last, I've visited schools and libraries or done theatre shows in Kent, Wiltshire, Peckham, Finchley, Petersfield, Watford, Camden, London's South Bank, Twickenham, Basildon, Greenwich and Cambridge. The NUT in Ealing asked me to do a version of the talk I gave in Wakefield called 'How not to bore the pants off children'. A couple of things struck me: there are some young teachers who weren't helped in their training (or since) to find a way of getting their pupils to enjoy books. A couple of young secondary school teachers asked me, 'How can we get our students to enjoy literature?' Clearly, there is no longer time to answer this question during PGCE and Education degree courses. If anyone knows otherwise, let me know. That said, it was heartening to see some 150 teachers coming to a meeting like this in their spare time. The hunger for a new approach (or is it an old approach?) is there.
My view about this was reinforced by a meeting I had with Jim Rose (he of the Rose report). He was satisfied that he had put into place a structure that gave children what he called 'the alphabetic principle' (ie synthetic phonics), but he appeared to me to be genuinely concerned that there was no equivalent programme in place 'to make books come alive'. Indeed. Isn't that what some of us have been banging on about for the last ten years ? We parted on good terms in absolute agreement on this matter but since then I've heard nothing. The other official meeting I had was with Margaret Hodge, Minister for Culture, Creative Industries & Tourism whose responsibilities also include 'the arts', heritage, architecture, royal parks, museums, galleries, archives, libraries and science. (I like to get these things right!) It was a curious occasion, because it was several weeks before the Government's announcement calling for all schools to give children five hours of 'culture' a week. However, Ms Hodge invited me and the Booktrust people I was with to think about what was to be announced with particular reference to libraries. How could libraries, she asked us, help 'deliver' this 'offer'? I suggested that the Government's own initiatives, Creative Partnerships and Cultural Hubs were good models of how to proceed, weren't they? I thought I detected a certain coolness to this suggestion. If so, then perhaps someone can tell me why. I've chaired several big conferences that brought together many practitioners from these two experiments to get schools working with local cultural organisations and there seems to have been some great work going on. Surely they have each created blueprints of how this could work all over the country?
The moment the Five Hours of Culture a Week story broke, I was asked by several news outlets to comment and it quickly became clear that no one in Government has actually worked out how the over-stuffed official curriculum can be squeezed to deliver the five hours, nor indeed what kind of organisation will oversee it. However, if it does become official, statutory policy, then presumably Ofsted will be required to ensure that schools are really delivering it. And will schools get any extra money to pay for the workshops, visits, cover for teachers and the rest? We shall see.
Meanwhile, there's progress on my Laureateship ideas - perhaps I'll leave the detail of that till my next log when, I hope, I'll be able to report something specific. Meanwhile, the 'A-Z of Poetry Tour' has begun. John Agard, Valerie Bloom and I did a show for some 900 children at the South Bank. There is a one-camera video of this, which I'm hoping might become available at some point. On that matter, I've made what might be the world's first online video book. My poetry collection, 'The Hypnotiser' went out of print so my son has filmed me performing it. You can find it on my website or on YouTube.
'Dear Mother Goose'
illustrated by Nick Sharratt
'Even Stevens FC'
illustrated by Jon Rogan
(a reprint)
Out in paperback
'Bear in the Cave'
Out in small format
'Sad Book'
I recently toured Dundee and met one of my heroes, Desperate Dan.
[click to view larger pictures]
An account of a school visit.
Please don't forget the Poetry Friendly Classroom webpage - and please send your comments in.
A review of a book by George Paizis about an interesting French anti-war poet.
Five minute interview in The Independent.
An interview with me by Bruce Black at the Poetry Foundation.
An article in the Guardian where several of us who help make picture books were interviewed.
Where I was in Scotland and my poem for the tour.
News of the release of a wonderful album of performance poetry from Apples and Snakes. Rush out and buy it.
In the last six months I presented:
A programme about the gentleman-adventurer, poet and anti-imperialist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt: 'A Blunt Instrument' (BBC Radio 4) (1 x 30 mins)
A series about children in their school playgrounds, revisiting the work of Iona Opie: 'The People in the Playground Revisited' (BBC Radio 4) (5 x 15 mins)
A programme about how 'Jack and the Beanstalk' came to be written down and how the story has been used ever since: 'Jack: 200 years up a Beanstalk' (BBC Radio 4) (1 x 30 mins)
A programme about humour in the face of tyranny: 'Laughter Close to Tears' (BBC Radio 4) (1 x 30 mins)
BBC TV Cbeebies
5 stories (not my own) read at the end of the 'Bedtime Hour' (May 2008)
A debate about where I live.
A debate about the Katie Price books.
What I really said about Harry Potter, to which I would add quite simply: I never said that the Harry Potter books were boring.
The Lift
At the second floor
the voice inside the lift said,
'Second Floor, going up.'
But the Second Floor
was the top floor.
Where was the lift going?
A Dangerous Raisin (but my daughter Elsie is helpful)
A raisin has escaped
from the raisin jar.
It's whooshing across the table
like a shooting star.
Now, it's leaping in the air
like a kangaroo.
'Look out Dad,
it's coming for YOU!'
Alligator Problem
If an excavator excavates
A motivator motivates
An activator activates
A rotivator rotivates
A cultivator cultivates
And an operator operates
What does an alligator do?
The Difference
In Glasgow
The hotel gave us something called
'Soap'.
In Edinburgh
The hotel gave us the same stuff
and it was called:
'Skincare Bar'.
Angry
Here comes the man
With the angry dog.
Here comes the dog
With the angry man.
Angry dog
Angry man
Angry man
Angry dog.
All school, library, festival and college bookings where you have no arrangements as yet for selling books should be arranged through Jan or Kate at: jan@speakingofbooks.co.uk
All other bookings should go through the laureate office and Sasha at: Sasha.Hoare@booktrust.org.uk
All press should contact also go through the laureate office and Nicky Potter at: nicpot@dircon.co.uk
May 30, 31
Hay Festival
June 3-6
Barbican events for schools with Francesca Beard
June 10, 11
Livepool
June 14
Recording the Oxfam CD of children's poems with many other poets
June 17
Southampton Book Fair
June 19
Performance of my poem-play about Hackney at B6 Brooke Sixth Form College, Hackney
June 20
Rushden, Northants, a school
June 25
Holland Park Comp, then Camden teachers
June 30
Conference and workshop with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education
July 2
Nottingham, a school
July 5
Ledbury Poetry Festival
July 7
Shrewsbury, a school
July 9
Institute of Education, London
August 24, 25
Edinburgh Book Festival, with Carol Ann Duffy
August 27
Hackney Library and 'Even Stevens FC'
August 31
Society of Authors
September 6
Stratford Circus, East London
Public Event
September 18
Rye Festival
September 19, 20
Bath Festival
September 22
Labour Party Conference fringe meeting with Anti-Academy group with Fiona Millar
September 25
Norwich
Then, later that evening
Institute of Psychoanalysis interview me in London
September 26
Bexhill
September 29
Royal Festival Hall
October 1
Oxford
October 2
Dartford, Kent, a school
October 3
Swindon, a conference
October 6
A Children's Book Week event to be arranged
October 9
Telford
October 12
Polka Theatre
Public event
October 14
Berkshire Bereavement group
October 16
American School
October 21
Canterbury
November 4
Brighton SPACE
November 19
Upminster, a school
November 25
Prime Conference, London on creative reading and writing for teachers
Open to all
November 28
Winchester book fair
December 2
Isle of Wight, schools
December 10
Sefton, Southport, schools
2009
February 10
Cardiff, teachers conference
March 3
Booktrust conference
March 13
Association of Pediatric Anaesthetists, Brighton
April-July
'Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat'
An exhibition, conference, performances and films on Poetry for Children at the British Library
April 20 and 21 for the conferences
April 30
Birmingham Young Readers Festival
June 2
Wiltshire schools
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