D is for Children’s Poets Shauna Darling Robertson, Jan Dean, Rebecca Kai Dotlich and John Dougherty, #AtoZChallenge #ZtoA

Liz Brownlee ♦ April 26, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

John Dougherty

John Dougherty is probably best known as the writer of around 30 books for children, (including the STINKBOMB & KETCHUP FACE series) but he has also been writing poems and songs since his teens. His first poetry collection, Dinosaurs & Dinner-Ladies, illustrated by Tom Morgan-Jones, was published in 2016, and the following year, his performance to an audience of 1,700 at the Hay Festival was live-streamed to 900 primary schools in Wales. John’s website is here.

Here is a poem from John (written when he was 18!)

Note to an English Teacher

A poem

Is like a hamster

Small

(Unless it is a long poem

In which case

It is like a large hamster)

And lively

(Unless it is a dull poem

In which case

It is like a sleepy hamster).

Admittedly

A poem has no fur

But it has a life

A life of its own

Given it by the poet

(Who is to the poem

As God to a hamster)

And as a hamster

Does what a hamster

Was made for

So a poem

Does what it

Was written for.

Perhaps, though,

The most striking resemblance

Is that you can take a poem

Apart

As you dissect a hamster

To see how it works

But, once you have done so, you find

On putting it back together

That, like a hamster in the same situation

It does not work

Half as well

As it used to.

Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Rebecca Kai Dotlich is a poet and picture book author who grew up in the Midwest exploring trails by the creek, reading comic books and building snow forts. She attended Indiana University. She speaks and teaches about writing for children to literature conferences, with students, teachers and aspiring writers all over the US. Her books have been awarded many honours. Rebecca’s work appears in dozens of anthologies, magazines and textbooks. Her website is here.

Here is one of Rebecca’s poems:

A Circle of Sun

I’m dancing.

I’m leaping.

I’m skipping about.

I gallop.

I grin.

I giggle.

I shout.

I’m Earth’s many colors.

I’m morning and night.

I’m honey on toast.

I’m funny.

I’m bright.

I’m swinging.

I’m singing.

I wiggle.

I run.

I’m a piece of the sky

in a circle of sun.

Jan Dean

Jan Dean is a British poet and a National Poetry Day Ambassador. She writes poems in a tucked away corner of the house, next to a rubber chicken handbag and Templeton the kiwi. She has two full collections of poetry, three collaborations and is in over a hundred anthologies. She visits schools to perform her poems and have an amazing time writing with classes. Her latests books are The Penguin in Lost Property, illustrated by Nathan Reed (written with Roger Stevens) and Reaching the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, illustrated by Steph Says Hello (written with Liz Brownlee and Michaela Morgan). Her website is here.

Here is one of Jan’s fabulous poems;

I caught a grasshopper –

I caught a grasshopper –

heard its saw-tooth squeaky song

then let my eyes follow my ears

to the pale blade where it sat,

moved soft and slow

so that it wouldn’t know I was there,

cupped it in my hands

before its hairpin legs could flick

and bounce it far away.

I caught a grasshopper –

felt it tickle in my pink palms.

Gotcha. Laughed.

But what can you do

with a grasshopper?

What use is a grasshopper

without the field,

without the sky?

How can it be a green scratch

against the blue

if you don’t let it leap?

So I opened the box of my fingers –

It wasn’t mine to keep.

Shauna Darling Robertson

Shauna Darling Robertson was born in Northumberland in 1968 and now lives in Somerset. She’s had lots of different jobs over the years but none have involved either jazz or maths (this sentence will make much more sense once you’ve read the poem below). Her poems for adults and children have been set to music, performed by actors, displayed on buses, turned into short films, made into comic art, hung on a pub wall and published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Shauna also makes artwork and loves working with other writers, artists, musicians and film-makers to explore and play with poetry in different ways. Her website is here.

Here is one of Shauna’s great poems:

HERE’S A LITTLE JAZZ NUMBER

Jools the jazz saxophonist

longs to be an accountant.

But belongs to a family

of maestro musicians.

‘No son of mine,’ moans Dad,

‘is going to be a number cruncher.’

‘Maths?’ hoots Mum. ‘Don’t

be daft, son. Music’s far more fun,’

as she tunes her harp

for the hundredth time