The Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award with poet Nicola Davies

Katy
0:11

Hi, I'm Katy.

Ali
0:13

And I'm Ali and welcome to Mostly Book Talk. We have a great interview for you with Nicola Davies, who's the chair of judges for this year's CLiPPA Prize. We had to look that up. It's the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education's Poetry Award.

Katy
0:26

Enjoy.

Katy
0:31

We are very pleased to have with us today Nicola Davies, who is well, she's so many things. So she is an author, a poet, a scientist, was a TV presenter. Do you still do TV?

Nicola
0:42

No, I'm far too ancient. Nobody will put my rich face on the telly anymore.

Katy
0:46

And she is the current children's laureate for Wales. And she is also the chair of judges for the CLiPPA Poetry Award, which is what we're going to talk about. So welcome, Nicola. Lovely to be here.

Nicola
1:00

Thanks for having me.

Katy
1:02

Really nice to have you here. You've done so many things. What do you see yourself most as? Is it oh crazy? Yeah,

Ali
1:10

or what's on your passport?

Nicola
1:11

. I'm going to have to get a new passport next year. So I don't remember what it says on my passport, whether it says zoologist or writer. I think it might say writer now. So I had one for many years that just said zoologist. Because even though I was writing, I didn't kind of feel like I was. I mean, that's the one I would most cherish. Although I've written lots of different things. Everything I write is an absolute pain. Except for writing poetry, which I just love.

Katy
1:48

So I would always thought that that was the hardest thing to write.

Nicola
1:51

Um, I don't know why it is, but it's the thing that comes most easily to me. I mean, not that any writing comes easily to anyone, because it's not an easy process. One of the things I'm often saying to children is when you're struggling with that blank page, when you're having that fight with a blank computer screen, don't think that means you can't do it. Of all the things I write, poetry is the thing I love most, and I love doing it. I think that's because I was raised with it first. My family is not a posh family, but my dad knew lots of poems by heart. So he recited them to me. But I'm sure all those poets, and I used to love Keats when I was young. My dad loved Keats, so I know, you know, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, all of that. But I'm sure all of those poets struggle with that blank page thing. I often say to kids, don't think you can't do it because you find it hard. Everybody finds it hard. Hardly ever do you just sit down and go, there's the beginning, there's the middle, there's the end. I mean, once in an absolute blue moon, something will come down my arm onto the page. Almost like, how is that happening? I'm not sure. But usually it's a question of redrafting, rethinking, throwing it away and starting it again. And I think that's a really, really, really important thing for kids to understand about creativity in general, is that bad is the way you get to good. Failing is absolutely on the direct line to success. That's something that kids really, well, everybody struggles with that, but I think in the context of children in school, in classrooms, which is very goal-oriented behavior, creativity is not necessarily goal-oriented behaviour. It's all round the houses, and you don't kind of know what you're gonna get. And that doesn't quite fit with learning outcomes.

Ali
3:50

And there's something something you're saying there as well about having the space to leave things and come back to them.

Nicola
3:56

Oh my god.

Ali
3:57

Do you know you don't have that in school, do you? You have to hand it in.

Nicola
4:00

You absolutely don't. The only book about writing I've ever read is Stephen King's On Writing. The most useful piece of information in that book is when you finished, put it in a drawer and don't look at it for a month. I don't have the opportunity to do that very much, but my goodness me, is that helpful or what? Yeah. You're not so you're not so tied to it. Yeah. And you can be just that little bit more objective about what you've written and you see the bits that you need to take out and where you need to tighten it, where you need to expand it. You know, it's much, much more obvious when you haven't looked at it for a while.

Ali
4:38

Yeah.

Katy
4:39

And sometimes you probably go back to things and think it was actually much better than you thought it was when you left it. No, no,

Nicola
4:45

no, not so much.

Katy
4:48

I kind of hope that happens sometimes.

Nicola
4:50

No, sadly not, usually the reverse. Usually.

Katy
4:56

Ever hopeful.

Ali
4:57

We wanted to talk about your poetry collection, Choose Love, which was about the refugee experience, was highly commended in the CLiPPA. And what's it feel like? You're obviously on the shortlist, which was amazing, and now you're chairing the prize. How's that?

Nicola
5:12

Prizes, I know with my logical head that prizes being shortlisted, being longlisted, that process is very tied up with the business of publishing, with the costs of entering books and all of that stuff. It's not a completely level playing field. And it's a lot about luck, whether people just happen to like what you've done. And yes, there are criteria and there are ways that we all recognize good writing when we see it, but we also just like some things and don't like others.

Ali
5:46

Yeah.

Nicola
5:46

And that's nothing to do with the quality of the work. So I was absolutely aware that I was just lucky to be on that short list, but it felt like the most extraordinary validation. You know, talking about what profession I put on my passport, the profession I have always wanted to put on my passport, all my life, actually, as poet, and getting that CLiPPA special award, especially for those poems which were uh a great responsibility to be given people's real, very difficult, often very tragic stories, and to be entrusted with their retelling, to have those have a big green tick beside them. That was huge for me. That was absolutely huge. And I think many writers, many female writers, not so many male writers, but many female writers, the biggest struggle for us is self-belief. And it is for me. Even after your incredible track record. At the moment, I feel like a failure at the moment. Like a total failure at the moment. Next week I might feel a bit better, but right now, today, rubbish. Yeah. That's that's what it is. I mean, you know, I know lots of female friends who write, and most of us feel like that on a record basis. And is that because your mind is on the one that you're currently trying to write, which you haven't got done yet, even though you've got such an extraordinary backlist of books? I mean, the list goes on and on and on, and so many of them have been highlighted and awarded, and everything else. Yeah, but the things that get lauded in the publishing world and in the children's publishing world are the latest celebrity who has written a book. I went to the London Book Fair last year and Ciara Knightley's book. Huge posters everywhere. Yeah. Now I haven't seen it, I'm sure it's a perfectly nice book, but it's not more perfectly nice than Britta Teckentrup's book or Mariajo Ilustrajo's book, or a whole list of really fantastic author illustrators, particularly with picture books, who would struggle to get that level of attention. And I can be very logical about that and say, yeah, that's just the way the publishing works. But actually, what it feels like as an author on your own behind your desk or in your studio is it feels like being kicked in the face. It just does. I can see that. Yeah. And it is that peculiar thing, well, not peculiar thing, but the reality that publishing is a business, it's a commercial business. Yeah. And writing is a creative endeavor, and the two kind of sit alongside each other slightly uncomfortably. Never must I or anyone working creatively lose sight of the fact that it is an incredible delight and privilege to be able to work creatively. It's a really, really fantastic thing. And also to remember that even though the kind of commercial world, well, the world outside of the creative industries is very fond of saying that it's frivolous and what we do doesn't matter. And actually, what matters is stocks and shares and columns of figures and all of that. Yeah, that stuff does matter. But actually, in times of trouble, and we are going to be entering probably about 250 years of big trouble. The arts, music, writing, painting, thinking creatively, that's what's going to get us through.

Nicola
9:24

 

Katy
9:24

It's something we should all remember, the value of that.

Nicola
9:28

Um, absolutely. And particularly poetry, because poetry's portable. Yes. You can put in your heart and carry it around with you forever and ever. And you can, as you say, as your father did, you can memorize it. You can't memorise a 600-page novel, but you can memorize it.

Katy
9:45

Yeah. Before we go on to talk about a CLiPPA and the prize, can we just ask you about one of your other hats, which is the Children's Laureate Wales, which you're in the middle of the term, aren't you? It's a two-year term. Yeah. What do you do as a laureate?

Nicola
9:58

It is slightly like nailing jelly to a wall, knowing what you're supposed to do. And I think for the Welsh laureateship, it's even more amorphous because I am only half of the Welsh laureateship team. Sean Thomas Owen, who is a legend in his own lifetime, totally fabulous person, who is the Bath Plant Cumbri, who's the Welsh language version. The Welsh language laureate, Children's Laureate for Wales, has a longer history than the English version. So I'm the English language version. And it's new, it's a slightly tricky position because of the whole kind of politics of the Welsh language in Wales. But what I do have the opportunity to do is do lots of work with kids, working with other organizations too, not just Literature Wales, who are the organization that supports the laureateship, and they are very much about writing. So I'm also working with the National Literacy Trust. So I've been in schools in Cardiff this week talking to parents about reading to their kids. And I have creative projects that Literature Wales have found funding for. So I'm doing a project around map making and about thinking about landscape and time and connecting kids with place. So a mixture of visual, spatial awareness, and detail, putting that into words and pictures. I'll be working at six Welsh castles.

Ali
11:24

Oh, fancy.

Nicola
11:25

I've been listening to podcasts about plantagenic history, so I've got a bit of background. And kids are going to be making their own annotated, illustrated plans and maps.

Katy
11:38

Oh, that sounds amazing.

Nicola
11:40

We'll spend two days exploring each castle and making these map-based artworks. I think it's probably the best way to describe it. So it's going to be great fun. And then Fran Evans, who's a lovely, lovely illustrator who also happens to be a friend, she has a wonderful specialism in turning children's input, both visual and written, into illustrated maps. So for each castle, she'll make a big map.

Ali
12:07

And will that map stay at the castle for people to see?

Nicola
12:09

Well, what's going to happen is there's going to be a traveling exhibition. How exactly that's going to work is to be discovered. I'm trying to tie my love of the natural world into the literacy focus of the laureateship. So next year it's about noticing, again, noticing, listening, seeing, identifying migratory species that come to Wales, writing about that. I wanted an opera at first, but I had to wind my neck in a bit. Now it's going to be a songbook, hopefully. So we'll turn the children's writing into music that can be performed. And so connect Welsh children with the idea of Wales's connection with the Atlantic and Live by the Sea. The Atlantic is there. It's a straight line between me and Newfoundland. And of course, all the birds that come to the Pembrokeshire Coast, all the birds that come to us from sub-Saharan Africa. It's good to be reminded that borders are an entirely human invention. Yeah. And Welsh and music is in the blood of my family is both sides from working class communities in South Wales on the Gower Peninsula. And in the middle 20th century and throughout the 19th century, there were working class communities who organized music festivals, who were organized by Steadfords. You know, there was there was a train that came from London on a Friday night or a Saturday morning, I can't know which it was, and it had a nickname. I can't remember the nickname. It had this nickname because so many of the people on that train were soloists who were employed by Isteadford's and music events organized by working class communities in Wales. So they would supply the choir and the orchestra and they perform an oratorio and then they pay soloists to come from London.

Katy
14:11

Amazing.

Ali
14:12

That's amazing.

Nicola
14:13

Yeah, isn't it?

Katy
14:14

Yeah. So, in terms of your migratory visitors, which one has the longest journey?

Nicola
14:20

Swallows are pretty close, pretty up there. But one that I absolutely adore, uh, and because it's here in South Wales in enormous numbers, but if you don't go to the offshore islands, you don't see them. And because lots of the scientific work on migration was done on them, Manx Shear waters. They're like little mini albatrosses, and they come to Pembrokeshire from Argentina off the coast of Patagonia.

Katy
14:49

And where are they going to?

Nicola
14:51

They are going to Scoma and Ramsay And there are some on the Isle of Man or on Bardsey, and they nest in holes. We hold more than half of the whole species here in South Wales. They should be our national bird. There's no two ways about it. And they are extraordinary, extraordinary little birds. When you see a picture of them, they're not much to look at, but when you see them fly, these long narrow wings and they shear the water.

Ali
15:15

Do they come to nest here and then fly home?

Nicola
15:17

They come to nest here, they come to nest in burrows, and then at the end of the breeding season, the adult birds leave their very fat little babies in the burrow and they go. And the babies stay. The babies then grow their feathers, come out of their burrows, look around, and head out to sea. But one of the really uh tragic things that happens is because when they're heading out to sea, what they're looking for is that bright line of the horizon. And then the prevailing winds, uh, and there are various smells, particularly, that they are keyed in to follow. So the prevailing winds and the smell of plankton, basically, that's what guides their path. And it takes them down past the coast of Spain, and then they pick up the gyre of winds that goes over the top of the South Atlantic and takes them to Patagonia. Gosh. So the babies go as well in the year that they're born. Babies go in the year they're born. Yeah, they do. But without their parents. Because there are lots of light lights on land, and if there's an onshore wind, combination of onshore wind and too many lights, they will get stuck. They fly in land, and once they're on land, they really, really struggle to take off. Last year it was a huge wreck of hundreds of birds. But the people in temperature here, there's a big volunteer force who go all the way along the beaches, hundreds of people, and rescue these birds and then take them back out to sea and relaunch them. So I can't forgot what the figure was for last year, but it was a huge number of birds last year.

Ali
16:47

That's bonkers and lovely.

Nicola
16:49

It is bonkers, and there were lots and lots of stories that came out of that last year. I'll just tell you one, which is my favourite. So there's a village along here called Roach, and there is an elderly lady living in a retirement bungalow, and one of these little shear waters ended up in her garden behind her hydrangeas. And one of her neighbours said, Oh, it's just a bird, it'll find its way. And after three days, it hadn't found its way. And she happened to see a poster. She'd lived in Roach all her life, but she had no idea about the shear waters that are right there. And a volunteer came round and put the bird in the box and told her all about this bird's amazing story about where it was going, where it would spend the winter, how it'd find its way back to Skoma next spring. And as she handed the box over, this lady bent over, kissed the box, and said, Send me a postcard.

Katy
17:43

That's so lovely.

Nicola
17:44

How lovely is that?

Katy
17:46

That's really lovely. I was just reading a book by Katya Balon. I think it's Floodline. Ghostlines. Ghostlines. Ghostlines. Yes. Yeah. But in that part of the story is that they're on an island but up in Scotland and they have loads of puffins. And apparently every year some of the puffins hatch late. And so all the puffins leave. And then there are some that come out late. So in the story, they have to turn all of the lights off on the island and get the puffins so that they go off in the right direction, the little baby puffins. Right. Um, it really reminded me of that.

Nicola
18:30

Some of them head up to nearly Greenland, some of them head up to the middle Atlantic, some of them go down to the Med. Gosh. Uh, some of them go to the coast of Spain. After this, I'm gonna have to go find it all out about Shearwaters and Oh, shearwaters. Totally amazing. There's a lovely book, Adam Nicolson, The Seabirds Cry. Highly recommended. I crew on a wildlife watching boat every summer, and that's my revision book. Read that at the beginning of every spring, get it all back. You know what's going on. Get all my facts back in a straight line before I get on board the boat and say, Okay, everybody, this isn't this, and this is what it does, and that's or that.

Katy
19:05

It sounds amazing. Sounds amazing.

Ali
19:06

Maybe you could put shear water spotter on your passport.

Nicola
19:09

She's shear water wrangler.

Ali
19:14

So we should move on to the CLiPPAs. I've been on an exciting diversion.

Katy
19:19

So tell us, for listeners who haven't come across the CLiPPA before, what is it? What does it do? What does it involve?

Nicola
19:25

The CLiPPAs are a fantastic award for children's poetry. They are run by the CLP, hosted by the CLP. And if you don't know what the CLP is, you need to know. They're a wonderful organization. The Center for Literacy and Primary Education, fantastic organization, amazing support for teachers and books and writers and illustrators. Totally, totally brilliant. The CLiPPA Awards are an annual award. And what happens is that a panel of judges is appointed, and that includes teacher specialists, poetry specialists, poets. So this year's judging panel was fantastic. Well, I had the honour to be the chair of the CLiPPA judging panel this year, but I'm very, very glad to say that I had a lot of extremely capable help. There were four other people on the panel with me. Lisa Mead, who's the editor of Apples and Pears, so she knows loads about poems, about poetry performance, and Anjali Patel, who's uh a fantastic member of the CLPE staff, who is an advisory teacher and has huge experience of using poetry in schools, particularly with little kids. We had Jake Hope, lovely Jake Hope from YLG, who's also very involved with the Carnegie Dodging Panel. And last year's winner of the CLiPPA Award, Colette Hiller. So I wasn't alone. Uh, and actually hearing all the different perspectives from those different judges was really, really fantastic. I learned so much. We get a mahoosive pile of books along listed. So I literally had four cardboard boxes on my desk of books, and they're an enormous variety. So there are books for little teenies, teenage verse novels, and everything in between. Illustrated, not illustrated, just the most mind-boggling variety of things. So whittling that down was really, really hard. I have judged poetry and book competitions before, so I'm kind of daunted, but not quite as daunted as I might be if I was doing it for the first time. So actually, the first filter is pretty easy, actually. Sorting out the first line of wheat from what fairly obviously I don't want to call it chaff, but not kind of first order stuff. But Then whittling down the short list, that's the bit that the judges get together to do. So we spend a day sitting round a table with a pile of books. And we go through all the books and do that wiggling again collectively. And then we arrive at a list which we've scored. Basically, yes, no, and maybe. Right. And then we talk about all of them because there's a certain amount of overlap for the yeses, but the no's and the maybes, not so much. So then every single book gets read aloud, gets talked about, and everybody brings their particular expertise. And actually, I have to say, I think every single one of us on the judging panel altered our opinion as a result of listening to other perspectives. And that was really fantastic. I mean, it's my job as chair to make sure that everybody has a say. So if somebody's going off on one on their favourite book or their favourite dislike, I have to make sure that I get them to shut up so that everybody else can say what they want to say about it. So we really do get a real kind of consensus on each book. It was the most pleasurable judging experience. It really was. It was fantastic. Listening to other people's opinions, listening to their very detailed and thoughtful analysis, knowledgeable. It was just totally brilliant. It really was absolutely lovely. And I was really happy with the short list that we finally arrived at. The other thing about the short list is the short list is really the winners, you know, because what we do is we do try and make sure that there's something for everybody in the short list, so that there are a range of books across the age groups. So really, everybody on that short list, I would like them all to win. I wish that we didn't have to just choose a single winner. I think it's crazy choosing a single winner. And I think in the light of everything we've been saying about creativity and learning outcomes being an anathema to each other, I think creativity and one winner are slightly ridiculous. So for me, the short list are the winners. But that's the nice thing about shortlists, isn't it? It does bring all of those books or all of those uh publications to the attention. So most people, when they see a shortlist, they will look at all of them. That's absolutely true. I spend a lot of time either behind my desk writing or in schools talking to kids, getting them to write, getting them to make pictures, talking to them about my work. So I'm not as aware of what's going on with other people's writing in other areas of children's publishing as I was when I was teaching. I used to lecture in creative writing, and I really did have a bit more of a finger on the pulse then. And I absolutely don't now. So when I'm looking for books, I look at the long lists for the Carnegie, for the Greenaway, for the Wainwright, for the CLiPPA. And that's incredibly helpful. And it's a really helpful way of finding really good books. And that's why I wish more teachers were aware of those prizes because I still encounter many teachers who simply do not know about these children's book prizes. And they're a really fantastic way of finding books that you can then introduce to your kids.

Ali
25:31

Yeah, that's part of our mission, really, is the world out there. Yeah, exactly.

Katy
25:39

When people are in the judging panel and you're in that room and someone's going, This really works, or I really like this, what are they seeing in those books and those poems?

Nicola
25:48

That's a question really about what does poetry do? And that's really tricky. For me, what poetry does uniquely is it combines factual information, observation, experience with emotion and puts it into language that may not be complicated, but is carefully choreographed to carry imagery and emotion so that it's a perfect little package that goes straight into your heart. And even if what you're reading about in that poem is something that you have never experienced yourself, what you have is an act of recognition when you read those words. Even though it's something you don't know, you recognize it. You recognize the reality of the human experience and the human vision. And that's true even in the simplest poems for the youngest children, even in poems that are designed to be hilariously funny and frivolous, there is something more going on underneath the surface. Definition. Something more going on that is weirdly beyond words. That sounds a very strange thing to say about an art form that is actually all about words, but what's going on in a poem is more of words. So that what I'm looking for when I'm reading a poem is that moment, that little thrill, actually, that the poet delivers. And I think so much of that is about where the poet is coming from. I don't think you can fake it. You you it has to be from your soul, it has to be from your heart, it has to be coming from somewhere absolutely real and authentic in you to write that. You can fake it, you can write things that look like a poem, that read like a poem, but they don't have that little kernel in them because they haven't come from a true place. And I think you spot that.

Katy
27:50

It was interesting how you dealt with the funny ones as well, because some of them are just designed to be fun.

Nicola
27:55

Absolutely. And that's fine. The other thing to say is for the books that we didn't choose, that doesn't mean to say that they aren't worthy of finding a readership. Yeah. They're doing a different job. Yeah, yeah. And I suspect that there are some that came very close. It's actually physically painful to have to put them in the reject panel. And I think for most people on that judging panel, you know, we know these writers. Yeah. That's an added layer of pain when you're essentially saying to somebody you know, well, actually, I'm I'm not going to choose your book. That's pretty hideous. We've also said, Well, the chair of the panel of judges, for goodness sake. I know, but I don't have a casting vote. Oh, that's handy. Okay. So you blame. Democracy, that's good. Democracy in action. Absolutely. I'd love to have chosen your book, but I was outvoted. I did choose it, but it was unvoted. What can we tell you?

Ali
28:50

No, that's great. Do you want to give us a rundown of them all?

Nicola
28:53

Oh, yeah, I'd love to. I've got the pile in no particular order. The other thing I was saying, do look at the CLiPPA shortlisting, which is online, because all the poets read. Oh, brilliant. All of them. She's gorgeous. The only person who didn't read was John Agar because he wasn't able to attend, but his illustrator read, and she was fabulous. So, first up, we have Press Start to Play by Sam Gayton with this absolutely gorgeous cover and lots of nice little interior illustrations as well as a cover by Jack Noel, and that's published by Anderson Press. So it's one of those books that you might just think, oh, this is just about fun. So it's all about games, about video games, about board games, but it's also about children's relationship with that, their relationship with themselves, with their families. There's all sorts of things that get into these poems. So they're really fun, they're really accessible, they're lovely performed, read out loud, which is important. There are lots of kids who think poetry's not for me will find poetry is for them through this book.

Katy
30:07

Interesting. It's quite an unusual topic, isn't it?

Nicola
30:10

Even though it's not an expensive edition. Actually, it's really nicely printed and laid out, and the paper quality is quite good. All that stuff actually really matters, particularly with poetry, because it really, really matters how you relate to the page and how you look at the page and the font and all of those things. It's a very pleasing book to have in your hand and very portable, and that's relevant because of the nature of these poems. You carry it with you and you dip in and dip out of it, and you read them to your friends. Really good.

Katy
30:50

Am I right in thinking that's his first poetry book?

Nicola
30:53

Do you know? I don't know. Yeah, okay. It might be actually.

Katy
30:56

Because I think he's written books…

Nicola
30:58

Yeah, he's written a playwright and all sorts of does all sorts of things. He's terribly groovy and marvellous. That's great. They had a hat on.

Katy
31:06

And what age group is that aimed at?

Nicola
31:08

That is slightly older. I would say that's slightly older. I'd say year five advanced. Okay. But year seven, eight, nine could yeah, get it. It's got a great cover on it as well, hasn't it? Because like you say, they'll pick it up. Yeah. It's really cool, yeah, and fun, and it tempts you in with apparent frivolity and then delivers all sorts of little nuggets of something a bit more, which is very good.

Nicola
31:31

Next up is an anthology. This is Not a Small Voice. Now, there were quite a few anthologies that were in the CLiPPAs, and some of them I had a bit of a problem with because they had absolute anthology standards in by very well-established, sometimes 19th or 20th, early 20th century poets. And I think a lot more going on in the world than this. So I had my doubts about that. Although this book has some things that are and some names in it that will be familiar, there are lots of new things, there are lots of names that I didn't know, I probably should know, but didn't know. It presents poems that are about all aspects of black experience. This is not a small voice poems by black poets. Having said that, it's not a poem, a poetry book just for people of colour. It's a poetry book for everybody. Because, as I was saying earlier, when you read a good poem, even if it's something you've never experienced, you empathize with it, you recognize it as authentic human experience. And some of the things that are being written about in here are difficult and sad. Some of the things that are being written about in here are just lovely and wonderful. And overall, I would say this is a fantastically inspiring, uplifting, positive collection. Your heart will sing. And it's a very beautiful thing.

Katy
33:13

Yeah, it's a beautiful book, isn't it?

Nicola
33:16

I absolutely love that.

Katy
33:17

It's a really nice, beautiful book. It's US, Caribbean, and the UK, isn't it?

Nicola
33:22

So there's lots of gorgeous Caribbean speech rhythms in here. There's the poetry of spoken language, actually, is very well represented in these poems. It's a real kind of cultural picnic, too, which I really, really loved. So it's fantastic. This is Not a Small Voice. Poems by black poets. Chosen by Tracy N. Todd, who is an absolutely wonderful person, Google her she is fab, and illustrated by Jade Orlando, very beautiful illustrations, and a great marriage of the words and the pictures.

Nicola
33:57

So this one is the book for the youngest of our audience. So this is Five Little Fingers, a collection of finger rhymes by Sean Taylor, illustrated by Fiona Woodcock. Now, this is the one that I changed my opinion about, I have to confess. So this wasn't on my short list, but when I heard from our teacher specialist, when she was talking about working with this book with very little kids and kids who find language difficult, so children with learning difficulties, I absolutely got it. I absolutely got how well these rhymes work and why they work and why they're important. And I went back and read them again, and the penny dropped, I have to say. And it's lovely. Each poem comes with a series of simple little gestures that you can do with your child. So these are things that you could do with the very smallest kids, with babies, and you can do it with children who have learning difficulties. Kids who are visually impaired can enjoy these poems too, because you can do the gestures with a hand. And I could imagine that some of these poems could become little rituals, little bedtime rituals that you would do with your little baby right the way through their toddlerhood until they started school. Something maybe even that they would remember right the way into adulthood. There are many parents now who struggle to find ways to relate to their little kids. And this is a way into that. This is a way in for parents to discover how to have fun, how to have those lovely, sharing, one-the-play, intimate moments with their smallest children. So that book is doing a really, really important job.

Katy
36:04

And it's amazing to be able to come up with a whole load of new poems about your fingers and

Nicola
36:11

absolutely. So I totally take back everything I thought, and I'm utterly won over by that book now. So this book is right on my home territory. This is a first book of bugs by Simon Mole, illustrated by Adam Ming. Now, as I have many, many times in my career tried to turn natural history, non-fiction information into poetry that sings and taps its feet. I know how hard this is. I know what a miserable journey it can be. How frustrating, how infuriating, how maddening it can be. And Simon Mole's just done the most brilliant job. All these poems deliver proper science, proper natural history, accurate, interesting, enlivening, actually, information. And the marriage with the illustrations is absolutely gorgeous. Oh wow, lovely. Isn't that gorgeous? There are lots of lovely little thoughts in here. And that's the other thing that I really want poems to do is I want them to make me think about something I know in a new way. So the first step, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, to talk about the steps of a millipede. Very often you take your first step. But if you're a millipede, you don't just take your first step, you take your 97th step, and that's absolutely gorgeous.

Katy
37:43

And he's a performance poet, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah. I think there are quite a lot of videos of him performing poems from that book. So people can look out for those. He's very good.

Nicola
37:52

The illustrations do a really good job too, because I have a real bugbear with illustrations that are so stylized they're not actually helpful anymore. But these are great because they all character of an illustrative voice, but they're also absolutely accurate. Accurate or satisfying, satisfied my internal geek.

Ali
38:13

A big tick. Big tick. There's someone doing lots of fact checking on that book. Is there a big tick? Is there a tick in the book?

Nicola
38:21

Is there a tick? No, I don't think there is actually. No, there isn't a tick.

Katy
38:27

I saw in the introductory the shortlisting video, was there was one about an insect that blasts things like

Nicola
38:34

the Bombardier Beetle that blows hot chemical vapour out of its bum. Who doesn't like an explosive rotten? What's not to like love? Yeah, we did the bombardier beetle on The Really Wild Show once. We had a little camera close up to its bum when it went and hundred-degree hotness. It's a very unique trait. It is a very unique trait. I can't really see myself how I would find useful that in my life, but certainly not on board boats. No, absolutely not.

Nicola
39:07

You've got the last one. The last one is this gorgeous treatment. But this is the poetry world of John Agar with absolutely gorgeous illustrations by Shirley Hottier. So this is a collection of poems right the way across John's long and marvellous career. But even the oldest poems, the ones that I remember encountering first when I was presenting a poetry programme on Radio 5 more than 30 years ago, they're as fresh as paint, they really are. They haven't aged or tarnished in any way. And John's poetry is a really, really fantastic example of how you're reading something that's fun, that's making you smile, that's making you feel the playfulness and music of language, but you're also getting a hit of real emotion.

Katy
40:06

His poems were really radical when he first was writing them in the 80s, wasn't there?

Nicola
40:11

Absolutely. And all the kind of wonderful incorporation of Caribbean speech rhythms that back in the 80s people would have said, Well, that's not very that's not proper English. All of that monster, it's all there. It just absolutely glows and gleams. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Just gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. And also it's a really nice size. Poetry books need to be hard back. They do. Because you go back to them. Because you go back to them, they need to have a long life. And these are poems that would speak to you from when you're little to when you're old. Good.

Katy
40:58

So that's an amazing introduction to those books. So, in terms of dates, you've announced the shortlist. Yeah. So the materials all out about that. There's a shadowing scheme that has opened up for schools, and all of the information about that is on the CLPE website. And that includes lots of resources for schools.

Nicola
41:18

Lots of resources for schools also. This is really, really important. Schools can upload videos of kids performing and reading the poems. And on the final celebration day when the awards are given, which happens in London, on the 9th of July, and on that day, for each shortlisted book, there will be a child or a group of children who will be selected to come on stage and perform one of the poems from each of the books. It's a fabulous day. And the kids performing the poems is absolutely wonderful. From my collection, Choose Love, this fantastic young girl came and performed one of the poems from the collection. And it was honestly truly one of the highlights of my life seeing that poem performed. So it's a really, really special thing and fantastic to involve the readers in this event and the celebration of poetry.

Katy
42:20

So schools can take part, it's completely free. They sign up on the CLP website, there's resources there, they can read the poems, they can then perform them either singly or can they do it as a group?

Nicola
42:32

Yeah, they can do it as a group. We've had Matt Goodfellow's poem a couple of years ago. Just had about five or six kids on stage doing it like a couple of performance bit movements, and it was brilliant. And when they submit their poems, they have the chance to come to the final on the 9th of July.

Katy
42:49

So you've mentioned that in terms of having children performing the poems, and clearly a very moving moment for you. Why get children to perform poems and speak them out loud?

Nicola
42:58

Because that's what poetry is about. Poetry is about portability, the sound, the music, the sharing. I think more than any other sort of writing, actually, poetry is about sharing it. And because poems do have that portability, you can learn them, you've got it to share with somebody else and to hear it spoken and to hear it out loud. It's absolutely part of that poem's life and existence to be performed and shared. And I think for children to see that happening, to understand that this is a very unique and special cultural form that allows them to connect with other people in a way that they might never have done before or never had the courage to do before, I think is a really important part of the job that poetry does in the world.

Katy
43:54

Yeah. And we've talked to the Poetry by Heart competition. And the kids doing that, the impact that has, and watching some of the performances for that are amazing. It does work very well. So it's the National Year of Reading. Do you have special hopes? And I know that the CLP are expecting record numbers of schools to take part because of the highlight the National Year of Reading has put on all of these events. What are your hopes for it?

Nicola
44:21

I hope that with the National Year of Reading, it will put books and reading back closer to the centre of everybody's cultural life. And I think the role that poetry has in that process is poetry is quick and easy and accessible to read. So for people who don't think they can make time for war and peace, or all 20 of Patrick O'Brien's novels, which I love and will reread this year. Poetry is a really fantastic entry level. And because there are so many different voices, and I think particularly for diversity and different ethnicities that we have in the UK, poetry really speaks to and for those people now. And performance poetry is a wonderful way of getting people to understand the power of the spoken and the written word. And that's another portal into reading and books that I think will open wider during the national year of reading.

Katy
45:36

Thank you. It's been amazing talking to you. It's been such a nice conversation. And what I've loved also is that there is a wonderful sound of bird song in the background. Which feels incredibly fitting and it's really lovely. It's very relaxing.

Nicola
45:51

There's so many birds. I went for a run this morning, and the white throats they love hedgerows, and the hedgerows around here are pretty battered. But there are bits of hedgerow that are still good enough for white throats, and there were little white throats siting and singing in the tops of the hedges this morning.

Ali
46:06

So lovely. A few parakeets in my back garden. They're very pretty, but they do look a bit odd. They're joyful. They're just but they go around in little gangs. That's what I find so funny. If

Katy
46:20

they come out into my garden as well, there's never just one or two, there's like 30, 40 of them that all think this is our tree today, and they're all there being really noisy, and then they move on together.

Ali
46:30

And I have an owl as well. We have a tawny. Yeah. Oh, that's lives at the back. And that's and sometimes it's kind of like oh, the owls. Owls makes me very happy. But most of the time it's just noise and traffic.

Katy
46:44

Thank you so much.

Nicola
46:45

Brilliant.

Ali
46:45

Thank you.

Katy
46:50

You may have realized that we found it really hard to stop that conversation. We were having such a good time.

Ali
46:57

A lot of extra questions that she didn't really need to answer in order to keep on the line because we were having such a lovely time.

Katy
47:03

Yeah. So urge you to go and seek out the CLiPPA shortlist. There's lots of really lovely things to read and explore there to get involved in the shadowing scheme. And yeah. Anything else, Ali?

Ali
47:17

I just think it was just lovely to listen to her talk about wildlife with the birds in the background. And if she'd been teaching me, I don't know, whatever, ornithology, I would be a very good ornithologist.

Katy
47:30

Yes, I think anything really could have happy listening to chat about all sorts of things. But I don't know whether the bird noise comes through when you're listening to it. I tried not to cut it out, but it was very peaceful listening to it in the background.

Ali
47:44

It was very good. We really enjoyed that.