A Discerning Audience
Writing for Children
I wrote my first poems for children when I was still a child. When my bestie had her daughter, she asked my then husband and I to be godparents and I wrote a wee collection for her when she was a little bit older. She was 30 last year, so you can judge for yourself how long ago that was!
I’ve continued to write poems for children and young people on and off over the years, but haven’t never considered submitting them anywhere until encouraged by an on-line poetry pal. Happily a few of my poems were selected and it’s given me the impetus to think about selecting more.
Children’s poetry isn’t simply about making rhymes about school. You have to engage young people with topics they care about. They want to be inspired, they want to be made to smile, they want to think about things and engage. Arguably, writing poetry for children and young people is harder than writing poetry for grown ups and it doesn’t have to rhyme!
I’m grateful to the amazing Johnathan Humble at the Dirigible Balloon for publishing my pieces in his superb online resource. Do have a browse at the other amazing poems there and recommend it to any children and teachers you know is. It deserves to be widely used.
Credit to Dirigible Balloon who first published this poem.
