To celebrate National Poetry Day we are honoured to welcome Charlotte Hacking from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education to talk about the CLiPPA award and to introduce this year's shortlist. Established in 2003, the announcement of the 2020 winner will be made 9 October at a special event at Cheltenham Literature Festival.
The
CLPE Poetry Award, fondly known as the CLiPPA, is the only award in the country
dedicated to children’s published poetry.
In
our work with schools, teachers and children across the country, we know what
an important branch of literature poetry is, providing the gateway for so many
young readers and writers in their journey towards becoming literate.
The award exists to celebrate the best of children’s poetry in all its
forms, bringing prestige to the form and prominence to those shortlisted, as
well the winners.
It’s
an absolute privilege to be a judge on this award. Every year, I get to explore
the full range and breadth of children’s poetry that’s been published. Reading
through all the submitted titles is such a pleasurable experience, every title
offers something to delight and inspire. Coming up with a decision of which
titles rise above the rest to make the shortlist is the hard part!
For
me, I look through the eyes of all the children I’ve had the pleasure to know over
my career as a teacher. I’m looking for the best poetry, of course, but I’m
also looking for something that offers something new and special to children,
that will encourage them to read, to perform or to show them that poetry is a
medium they can use to make sense of or to share their own thoughts and
feelings, and that can give them a voice. One of my absolute highlights is to
judge the shadowing scheme alongside the award, where schools submit videos of
children performing poems from the shortlisted collections, as that’s where we
really get to see the impact of the titles we’ve selected.
This
year’s shortlist is comprised of books that universally stood out for all of
the judges on the panel. Choosing a winner was really difficult, but the
shortlisted titles were books that every single one of us agreed on. There’s a
really good range to delight children of all ages. Reflecting on it now, what
links all the titles is a sense of the experiential - engaging with the natural
world in The Proper Way to Meet a
Hedgehog and other How To Poems, Cherry
Moon and Poems the Wind Blew in;
experiencing the rich folklore of Scotland through fresh eyes in Wain and a deliciously visceral
experience of food in Midnight Feasts.
In a year where experiences have been limited for a great deal of the
population, but especially for children, this seems particularly important.
Over
the years that I’ve had the honour of judging the award, we’ve seen such a
positive shift in the quantity of collections and anthologies submitted, but
also in the quality. Back in 2014, when I started as a judge, many of the
submissions were standard 12.7 x 0.8 x 19.7 cm texts, with paper so thin that
the next poem could be seen through the poem you were reading. This isn’t to
say that the poems inside these collections weren’t of quality, but production
value adds a lot to the feel of the collection as a whole.
Now, we see collections like Michael Rosen and Chris Riddell’s A Great Big Cuddle and James Carter and
Nicola Colton’s Zim Zam Zoom!, which are beautifully produced to
engage the earliest readers. Texts like Eloise Greenfield and Ehsan Abdollahi’s
Thinker: My Puppy Poet and Me and Kate
Wakeling’s Moon Juice, offer richly
illustrated poems in hand-held size publications for developing readers. And
titles like John Agard’s The Rainmaker
Danced and Joseph Coelho’s Overheard
in a Tower Block offer older readers sophisticated illustrations alongside
expertly crafted poems, providing a greater depth of reading experience. This
quality of production makes poetry irresistible.
Key titles such as Allie Esiri’s A
Poem for Every Night of the Year winning the Independent Bookshop Week
award in 2017 and Fiona Waters and Frann Preston-Gannon’s I Am the Seed that Grew the Tree winning the Waterstones Children's
Gift of the Year award in 2018 have also raised the profile of poetry, showcasing
poetry as a pleasure to own and dip in and out of or to give as a gift.
Over the last six years, we’ve been really keen to raise the prominence
of the award with the children this poetry is published for. In 2015, we
launched the CLiPPA shadowing scheme. Each year since, we’ve seen a significant
increase in the number of schools taking part, from the first year where we had
just 42 schools involved to this year, where before the scheme has even
launched, we have nearly 500 schools signed up to take part from across the
country. This really does engage the children with poetry and its creators and
supports them in finding texts that they want to read and buy for themselves. Publishers
report a direct uplift in sales as the shortlist is announced and our dedicated
resources enable schools to use the shortlisted books in classrooms to inspire
children to listen to, perform, respond to and write poetry of their own. CLPE’s Poetryline website also contains a
wealth of videos from a range and breadth of children’s poets made up of
prominent poets who have been shortlisted for the CLiPPA.
One of the joys of poetry is that you don’t have to read a complete
collection all in one sitting. You can dip in and out, share a poem and let it
linger, talk about a poem, perform it and let it live within you. Poems shared
can also be an inspiration for children to share their own thoughts, in art in
response to a poem, in music, dance or drama to accompany a poem or as a
stimulus for children’s own poetry.
The
important thing is that we make time for poetry and don’t allow it to be
marginalised. If we, as adults, have negative attitudes or are hesitant or
fearful about poetry, this can be easily passed on to the children. Instead,
make time to get to know and read poetry yourself and listen to poets reading
and performing their work on sites like Poetryline and the Children’sPoetry Archive. Arrange a visit – virtually or in person – from a children’s
poet. Seeing a poet bring their own work to life is an inspirational experience
for children of all ages. Use the CLiPPA shortlistto
keep up to date on the best new children’s poetry, as well as recommendations
from organisations like National Poetry Day to
ensure you stock a range of poetry that will delight and inspire the young
readers you work with. Provide opportunities for children to perform publicly
at school events or as part of competitions like the CLiPPA shadowing scheme
or Poetry
by Heart.
A big thank you to Charlotte for the informative blog and to CLPE for running this special award.