Poems from Moira Primary School

I was lucky enough to spend World Book Day at Moira Primary School in Leicestershire. We hunted for chocolate eggs in assembly, played imagination games together, and Marjorie the parrot enjoyed visiting Years R, 1 and 2.

In years 3, 4, 5 and 6 the children thought about all the things that are possible when we read a book, or write our own stories and poems. Using the idea 'In a Book I Can...' they wrote their own poems. Here are some of the wonderful poems and ideas that they came up with.

Well done, children of Moira Primary, each and every one of you! Keep writing!

Mummy’s Not a YouTuber

According to my five-year-old, I need more than ten subscribers to my new YouTube channel before I can call myself a YouTuber. As I write this, the tally is at nine, since launch yesterday – and I am only related to SOME of them! Thank you, if one of them is you. Thank you if you subscribe or watch after reading this blog. Side note: I have no desire to be called a YouTuber. But if it makes me appear cooler to my three boys, then so be it. Also, I am sure he was being overly generous!

I’ve said before, that this writing children’s poetry game is made even more wonderful by the brilliant buzz of actually sharing the poems with children and seeing their reactions. I was lucky enough to visit two local schools for World Book Day, last week, and had a fantastic time. Children have the BEST imaginations. A pigeon made of jam will stay with me forever! Marjorie the parrot and I were on a high for quite some time afterwards, and it got us thinking about what to do next.

I remembered the YouTube channel I had set up weeks earlier, but not yet uploaded a video, and around the same time, a teacher told me via Twitter that she was studying my poem What the Cat Knows with her class. So, bim bam bosh, and a flick of Marjorie’s beautiful tail – there are now three poetry videos on my YouTube channel, one of which (naturally) features the marvellous Marj. I hope you’ll take a look, and maybe show your children, your class, and perhaps even subscribe, so I can tell my little boy that actually Mummy IS a YouTuber. And if you and your children enjoy my poems, I’d love it if you could let me know – via the YT comments, my website, or on social media. Writing can sometimes be a bit like living in a wordy bubble, so to see and hear that people are enjoying my poems, is just the best feeling.

Happy reading, writing, and poeming,

Attie x

P.S. Marjorie says Hi.

The Gate is a Poem

The thing about poems is that you never quite know when they’re going to pop up. They can, of course, be wholly relied upon NOT to appear when you sit down to write one.

For me, they come when I’m nodding off, when I am attempting to relax in the bath, and very often, when I am walking.

As a child I was forever in the fields, playing in the garden, or simply contemplating life, sitting on the gate to the nearby field. For a while there was a friendly horse called Pippit who would come when I called, and there were always dens to be built, berries to be picked, and trees to be imagined into houses and castles.

Nowadays, I try to walk most mornings before I sit down at the laptop. There are a few dog walkers on the route I take, but otherwise it’s just me and nature. By the time I get to the gate where I stop to take a photo of the sunrise showing off behind a tree, I’ve often got a poem forming.

So that got me thinking about the circular nature of it all. Here’s me, on my own, at a gate to a field, full of ideas and hope, just like I used to be.

I’ve pledged to myself to write more poems while out and about in nature, this year. I feel lucky to live where I do, lucky to be writing poems which are being published and enjoyed, and very lucky to have found another gate (all about symbols, this writing game, after all).

Notes on a Walk

Here

there are no pavements

but your feet know

just where

to go.

Here

stone walls are hung

with rugs

like moss-green

Granny-sofas.

Here

Hellos are gifts you find

on walks

passed between strangers

with smiles.

Here

there is so much

sky.