We are delighted to welcome Brian Moses, multi-talented prolific performance poet and percussionist, to the blog to discuss his latest collection, On Poetry Street, a treasure trove of 52 playful poems, one for each week of the year, with Tanja Jennings, a former Carnegie Medals judge.

Brian has travelled widely with his repertoire of over 3,000 poems and is a Reading Champion for the National Literacy Trust and a National Poetry Day Ambassador. His enthusiastic indoor, outdoor and online school sessions combine rap, rhythm and rhyme.

On Poetry Street sparkles with alphabetic acrobatics, surreal scenarios and virtuoso wordplay. Here Brian talks about the art and lyricism of poetry, the pangs of first love and how a sudden idea can spark creativity.

Congratulations on your creative, inventive and quirky collection Brian.

What does poetry mean to you?

It’s an addiction. Poetry touches every emotion. It can make you smile, laugh, shiver, think, wonder. It can make you sad and it can comfort you. It can say a lot in little, but what it does say can be so powerful that it remains with you through your life.

What is the first poem you ever wrote?

When I was 16 and keen on Sally who lived up the street from me, I wrote her a poem. In fact, the first poem I ever wrote was for her. I spent hours and hours composing it until one day, when I knew I’d never do any better, I decided to deliver it. I copied it out neatly, folded it and stuck it in an envelope. When it got dark, I sneaked up the road and pushed it through her letterbox. I waited one day, two days, a week.....but she couldn’t have been impressed, and later I knew that she hadn’t when I saw her walking out with someone else, someone I knew. He was two years older than me and had his own motorbike. I knew no good would ever come of it. I worried for Sally, that she’d made the wrong choice, went for ‘flash’ instead of ‘steady’. I soon got over it, but for a week or so it did hurt, that first rejection. Fortunately, it didn’t stop me writing more poems!

What is the secret of your sound?

I’ve always loved music and music is rhythmical and poetry is rhythmical and so I can combine percussion with poetry and I like that.

How important is rhyme in your poetry?

I think about 50% of my poems rhyme and 50% don’t. When I do rhyme, the rhyming needs to be right. A weak rhyme can spoil a poem. A rhyming dictionary is my best friend!

Why do you think alliteration in poetry is important?

It sounds pleasing and it contributes to the flow of the poem.

Why do you think repetition is important in poetry?

It can build in a rhythm to a poem without using rhyme.

What is your favourite type of word play?

I’m not sure I have one. I just love playing around with words.

Is your ‘Unlikely Alphabet of Animals’ inspired by Edward Lear?

Not really. It was a poem written a while ago but one that I never found a home for. It seemed a perfect shoe in to ‘On Poetry Street’.

Which poem did you have the most fun creating?

Probably ‘Villages’ as I spent a long time investigating villages with interesting names although many of the ones I discovered were perhaps a little too rude to include in the book!

Which poem did you find the most difficult to write?

I was not sure about the ending to ‘The Land of Yesterday.’ It didn’t seem quite right. My brilliant editor Janice Thomson, came up with one or two different ideas and we batted them back and forth till I gave one of them a final twist & we were both happy.

‘A Mouthful of Words’ and ‘A Difficult Poem to Read Unless You’ve Swallowed a Dictionary’ are entertaining. How did you decide upon which words to include?

With the help of a rhyming dictionary and choosing words I liked the sound of and which rolled off the tongue in interesting ways.

What is your favourite word and why?

Winnebago because it rhymes with multiple words.

What gave you the idea for your ‘if’ sequence of poems?

All writers ask ‘What if’. They are two very powerful words and have the potential to lead you to some very strange places. ‘What if T. Rexes were vegetarian? What if aliens stole underpants? What if there was a 5 star snake hotel?

How long does it take you to think of a poem? Does it just flow?

Some poems arrive with a whoosh! they fall onto the page and within fifteen or twenty minutes I’ve pinned them down. Others take much longer and need to be returned to a number of times before I’m satisfied. My best ideas come to me when I am out walking the dog.

What is the most exciting idea you have ever had for a poem?

I think I’ve always been interested in things that sound like they shouldn’t be true but actually are true - a man walking his iguana along the beach, problems with taking a lobster through security, an Egyptian mummified foot on display in a museum. Things that are strange, but true, often start me writing.

Mark Elvins’ quirky illustrations capture the comic nature of your poetry. Which is your favourite and why?

I like so many of Mark’s illustrations. They complement the poems perfectly. You’re asking me to do what I tell children I can’t do when they ask what’s my favourite poem. My answer is the same as the poet Brian Patten who always replied that he couldn’t say because he was frightened that if he did, the other poems would get jealous!

Which poets have influenced you the most?

I was drawn to poetry through my enjoyment of the lyrics of rock music, particularly singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and the Beatles. Bob Dylan was the first ‘poet’ I admired. I read his lyrics on the backs of his vinyl album covers and his words fired my imagination.

The poetry I was offered in school made little impression on me at the time. It wasn’t until I was 17 and picked up a book of poems entitled ‘Penguin Modern Poets: The Mersey Sound’ that I realised that poetry could be fun, that it could speak to me in a language that I understood and that it had relevance to my life as a teenager. Roger McGough, Adrian Henri and Brian Patten inspired me. I was hooked. The book changed my life.

Which poets would you recommend to readers today?

These days I read a lot of poets, particularly those who write for young people. Charles Causley is a favourite and often neglected in schools. Other writers whose work I admire are Kit Wright, John Agard, Wes Magee and Gareth Owen.

What advice would you give to a child wanting to write poetry?

If you want to be a writer, write. Don’t just talk about it, do it.  And keep a writer’s notebook filled with ideas, things people say, strange signs, observations etc It quickly becomes a treasure chest of ideas that may one day become poems.

Do you have any plans for future projects?

I have a verse novel being published by Scallywag in October 2025. I have a new collection of poetry that’s almost complete, plus I’m working on a fiction title and a poetry book for the very young.

Many thanks to Brian for this insight into his work and to Scallywag Press for the opportunity.

Discover more about Brian Moses’ by visiting his website at https://brianmoses.co.uk/ and You Tube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@bmredsealearn.

We are delighted to welcome Patience Agbabi to the blog for an exciting interview and discussion around Poetry By Heart.  Patience was born in London in 1965 to Nigerian parents. She has been writing poetry for over twenty years, and is now writing for children too. The Infinite, the first in the Leap Cycle series, won a Wales Book of the Year Award and the series has an enthusiastic following amongst young readers. The third instalment, The Circle Breakers, is out now. Patience is also a judge on Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition for schools and colleges in England and in this interview explains why she recommends we all learn poetry by heart.

Could you describe your own first encounters with poetry – at home and at school? When did you first feel that poetry offered something special? Do you remember learning poems by heart?

My foster mum read to me every night as a young child so my earliest memory would be of hearing nursery rhymes and loving the sounds as well as the sense of them. Poetry at school came much later. It would have been early secondary and I remember loving the soundscapes again, as well as the shape it made on the page. I distinctly remember the teacher explaining iambic pentameter and understanding it instantly. I was lucky because quite a few of the pupils found it difficult – it seems to be the hardest technical device to grasp – and it actually opened up creative doors in my head. When we had to learn ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ speech in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, I found it relatively easy because I was in tune with the iambic pentameter. I do think it’s important when learning a poem by heart that you get a choice. I was quite happy learning Shakespeare but I wasn’t your average kid.

You have always taken part in Spoken Word and live poetry performance – why is that so important to you and what do you see in audience responses?

I’m lucky to have had the gift of a very strong memory for learning poetry, even stronger when I’ve written it myself. I tend to write rhyming poetry which helps enormously with the mnemonics. My creative process involves revisiting lines over and over in order to generate subsequent lines. I hear them out loud in my head. That means by the time I get to the end of a poem, I know it. I could reproduce it on paper. Learning to deliver it fluently out loud takes a bit of rehearsal, much more as I get older! The spoken word and live poetry scene was very exciting for me. I feel privileged to have been living in London at the end of the last millennium as the scene was so vibrant, there was lots going on every week. I was initially inspired by hearing other poets perform. In the early days it was a mixture of African and Caribbean poets like Ahmed Sheikh, Merle Collins, Benjamin Zephaniah and Jean Binta Breeze. Then I also fell in love with the punk poetry of John Cooper Clarke, Joolz and Attila the Stockbroker. Then rap poets came on the scene. I could go on. I was inspired by them all and once I’d got over the crippling nerves, I loved the act of live performance, bouncing off the energy of the audience. In fact, I was less nervous performing off by heart because even though my voice was steady, my hand used to shake like crazy holding a piece of paper and I would find that distracting and worry the audience would be distracted too. Audiences always respond differently when someone is performing by heart. It seems more real; not having the pages there breaks down the barrier between poet and audience.

When did you first get involved with Poetry By Heart and why did you want to support the competition?

I was asked to judge the very first competition which was in 2013. I had to look up the date and I can’t believe it’s been around for a decade now. I instantly said yes because I think there’s something transformative about performing a poem out loud to a live audience. I liked that it asked young people to choose one poem pre-1900 and one post-1900. I’d always enjoyed poetry from previous eras but at the same time, loved contemporary poems. So I thought it would be a very good thing indeed to be involved in. I’ve judged quite a few written poetry competitions and I always find it excruciating to only be able to choose a few winners and runners up. There are always poems that don’t quite make it that are really good. But with Poetry By Heart, I know that every young person standing up on the stage is a winner. They will have gone through the process and had the chance to at least perform in front of their peers at school and if they were lucky and advanced further, a wider audience at the finals.

What do you most enjoy about being a judge for Poetry By Heart – could you describe the kind of performances you see and what the young people gain from the experience of performing at The Globe?

It is great to see young people take a poem by someone they’ve never met and make it their own. The best performances make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Since Covid, we’ve done the first stage of the judging from videos and that has worked surprisingly well. There is an intensity to the recordings, often done on mobile phones, that make you feel that person is performing directly for you. That said, it’s even better when I see the same poem on the big stage at the Globe. Then, the young people are performing in front of family and teachers and poet judges and the Poetry By Heart team; there is that communal buzz you can only get from live performance. The Globe is particularly good as a venue because it is both formal enough – designed for Shakespeare – but it’s also informal because it has that Groundling space at the front. That makes it very accessible. Mind you, it has been pretty hot the past couple of years so that front space has been a bit empty, people seeking out the shade, but I look forward to seeing a crowd a bit close to the stage this year!

Would you recommend that everyone learns poetry by heart and why?

Definitely. Because it’s fun and gives you confidence and instils a deep love of language and literature. And it also enables a reaching out to community. People generally learn poems so they can share them. They might savour them on their own tongue and lips but there is also a pure joy in lighting up someone’s life with a poem. The key thing is, it must be a poem that’s been chosen, not imposed. When someone chooses a poem, they choose it because it speaks to them. Even the process of finding such a poem is like finding a jewel, a linguistic gem that must be celebrated. I also think there’s something infectious about learning poetry by heart. When you see other people doing it, as I did, all those years ago in my early 20s, I wanted to do it too.

Book 3 in The Leap Cycle series of books for young readers is just out – what do you enjoy most about writing for young people in particular? Does your background as a poet have an impact on your writing?

There’s a point early on in Book 1, The Infinite, when my heroine states, ‘I LOVE words, the shape and the sound of them and how they feel on my tongue.’ Part of the impetus for writing for young people was wanting to celebrate the voice of my heroine, Elle. All the books are written in her voice, a first-person narrative. I created a main protagonist who loves poetry, on the page and out loud. In the sequel, The Time-Thief, Elle has won a poetry competition and eventually reads her poem out loud at, wait for it, a poetry salon at Dr Johnson’s house in the year 1752. It’s a time-travel series so I was able to create that scene. In the latest book, The Circle Breakers, anonymous notes are written in rhyming couplets and there is a spoken word Battle of the Beats in one of the earlier chapters. I’m currently working on the finale, Book 4, which includes scenes in a library called The Four Quartets. My poetry background totally fed the entire series. I could not have written it if I didn’t have a deep passion for poetry, both on the page but also out loud. Young people love hearing books read aloud. I’ve had a lot of feedback from teachers who have enjoyed reading The Leap Cycle books to their Year 5 and 6 classes. It feels like things have come full circle; my love of words came from hearing them being read aloud by my mum. Now I’m writing books for young people. Hopefully I’m inspiring some writers of the future.

The Circle Breakers is out now, published by Canongate, 9781838855796, £7.99, pbk and Poetry By Heart is open to all schools, primary and secondary, and colleges. To find out more visit the website or contact the team direct on info@poetrybyheart.org.uk or on 0117 905 5338.

Thank you to Patience for the interview and to Andrea Reece for the opportunity.

Ifeoma Onyefulu has written over twenty children’s books including the seminal A is for Africa.  Many of Ifeoma’s books are published by Frances Lincoln Ltd.  Here Comes Our Bride and Ikenna Goes to Nigeria won the Children's Africana Book Award in the United States.  Ifeoma’s play No Water in the Jungle was performed in London. Ifeoma loves telling stories to school children and comes from a family of storytellers.  Here Ifeoma introduces us to her new poetry collection  Sing Me a Song Ma.

If anyone had told me I would be writing poems in 2020, I would have laughed at them. But in January last year something strange happened, I began to get requests from schools to do poetry workshops, and no sooner had I said no to one school another one would pop up like a jack-in-box toy. I had never written a poem in my life, and that was the strangest thing. Then, two days before I was due to travel to Scotland to do a writing workshop for a school, I was asked again.

I would gladly have done a workshop on writing plays, if such a thing exists in schools, because of No Water in The Jungle, one of my plays, staged in London in 2019.

Anyway, I had a decision to make pretty fast, and it was not going to be easy to say no to the school, with two days to go. What’s more, we, the school, and I had spent months corresponding, and setting up the timetable, and I was to do the assembly, too.

Finally, I rang a friend for some moral support, and she chuckled, ‘But when I read your books, I think of poetry… it is the way you write,’ she said breezily.

Poetry - that word again.

I decided to stick with the timetable and do the workshop as initially planned.

So, as I was wondering how I was going to compose an upbeat email to the school about my decision, my eyes somehow wandered off and settled on a photograph on the far end of the wall. It was a picture of a Fulani woman I took years ago in northern Nigeria; she was dressed in bright clothes and had beads on her hair. After staring at it for what seemed like hours but was only a few seconds, I heard a voice in my head about a girl who liked many colours but would only wear blue when she went to see her grandma. Why? Was it because she liked blue or because her grandma liked blue?

I grabbed a pencil and paper and began writing. I didn’t know if it was going to be a short story or not, but I remember reading it back, and it felt like a poem with sprinkles of intensity and imagery, which surprised me a lot.

So, I wrote and wrote, I was very thankful I had something to do during the first Lockdown, and that was how I came to write my first poem titled What are Colours to Adaora!

Then, I wanted to write more poems children would enjoy, as much as I enjoyed the stories our mother and sometimes our grandfather told my siblings and me when we were children in Nigeria.

In December 2020, I published some of the poems online, as a collection, titled Sing Me a Song, Ma.

Two of the poems, especially Grandma’s Tree, are about nature, and the way we treat our trees. It was inspired by a conversation I had with our late mother about her favourite avocado tree, which didn’t produce any fruits for a long time.

Another poem, Rain, is about water shortage, people in low-income countries often struggle to get enough water. During the dry season, when rainfall was rare, we bought water from a well, but in the rainy season, we saved enough rainwater for cooking and washing, which lasted for several days.

However, some of the poems are lighthearted, for example, Sing Me a Song, Ma, is about a child who doesn’t want to go to sleep, so she comes up with a brilliant way of staying awake by getting her mother to sing her song, “A song that will make my eyes wake up and…. A song that will make me dance.”

Finally, I hope Sing Me a Song, Ma, will be an e-book for children and their families to read aloud together.


A big thank you to Ifeoma Onyefulu for writing this blog and introducing us to Sing Me a Song, Ma which is available via Smashwords

We are delighted to welcome poet Mandy Coe to the blog to talk about the adventures of co-curating the Children's Collection with the brand new Manchester Poetry Library.  Look out for Mandy's latest collection of poetry Belonging Street.

At the opening of the first free lending library in Manchester in 1852, writer William Thackeray said that people wanted books, '…as much as we look to air, or as much as we look to light and water…' He was right, and the library proved to be so popular that day, a police constable was placed at the librarian’s desk to help keep order. Today, Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature, famous for its vibrant art, music and literature scene, a perfect place for Manchester Poetry Library and its programme of cross-arts collaboration, translation and recordings of new work.

So, if Manchester is the right choice for this project, was I the right choice as co-curator? I think so! My comprehensive school (think 1970s, bell-bottoms and strikes) owned two poetry anthologies from Geoffrey Summerfield’s series, Voices. Full of edgy poems and illustrations of their time, they were designed to subvert. Like all school texts, the spines were cracked with being hurled about, but as we scowled and licked pencils, poised to graffiti the pages, the poems crept in. The door to literature, and in many cases, literacy, might have been closed to us, yet these books represented a loose panel begging to be jimmied open. I knew an invitation when I saw one, and took it.

The co-curation commission arrived at the same time as Covid 19, and looking around at my bookshelves, I was grateful that designing educational material for National Poetry Day and the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf had brought so many books my way. The lovely Anne Fine, as children’s laureate, left My Home Library as her legacy, and this inspired me to stock-take mine, and I set to: piling up new books and blowing dust off old favourites. Here were cheap and cheerful paperbacks filled with pen and ink drawings, plus huge books creaking open to full-colour spreads that made you hold your breath. And of course (thanks Oxfam) one battered set of Voices.

However, my library wasn’t this library… and it wasn’t as simple as sizing up… or sizing down (surveying ‘Top Ten’ poetry book lists of the great-and-good, confirmed a core list, but it also generated an infinite wish-list. Is this what ‘curation’ means, I wondered? The capacity to cull combined with the knack of cultivation? From my occasional stints as editor I knew the origins of the word ‘anthology’ was from the Greek, anthologia, meaning ‘bouquet’. It seemed that, like anthologised poems, each book must stand alone, yet resonate with others to suggest what lies beyond. I sat in a circle of books and resolved to borrow the three elements of Thackery’s speech:

Air: the community is the library

First goal… to support the Manchester Poetry Library’s commitment to reflect its community. Over 200 languages are spoken in Manchester, making it one of the most language-diverse cities in the UK. Guided by Poetry Projects Manager at MMU, Martin Kratz – a poet and passionate advocate of poetry in translation – the collection will be rich with books in translation and in first language. This celebration of both local and worldwide poets will be developed through MPL’s programmes of festivals, readings, mushairas and the commission of translation and new writing.

Light: not nursery rhymes as an afterthought

Second goal… ensure a balanced selection for the three age-categories (0-5, 6-12, 13-17) with an equal representation of single-author collections v anthologies, classic v contemporary, a multicultural range of writers, humour v reflective, small press v larger publishers, plus a range of languages and audio. I was very happy to include infants in the category, and thanks to the extremely experienced MPL’s director, Becky Swain, we have a ‘young adult’ category for teens.

Water: education

Third goal… create a fourth category for educators and writers. In addition to my work as a poet/illustrator and visiting teaching Fellow of MMU, I am a free-lance literacy advocate working with schools and inner-city projects, so I know that this category of teaching materials (including online resources) will be invaluable. This category will support librarians, teachers, teacher-writers and writers who visit schools, and help MPL develop a programme of children’s education events sharing innovative ways of teaching poetry.

Opening up and opening out

With the library’s physical opening postponed due to Covid 19, my final goal was to put on the ‘virtual kettle’ and open the co-curation up to the champions of children’s books. We selected libraries, reading and literacy projects throughout the UK, plus a few overseas, such as the Bookaroo Festival in Delhi and the Writers & Teachers Collaborative, in New York. A named individual in each organisation was asked to suggest one or two favourite children’s poetry books. This not only got people discussing children’s poetry, but will enable MPL to make these champions visible to young readers through, “This book is recommended by….” bookplates. Responses from this amazing community were positive, considered and generous. Anne Fine invited us to use bookplates from ‘My Home Library’ while Apples and Snakes even offered to send free audio CDs! What a pleasure this ‘open co-curation project’ was. To all who responded during lock-down, thank you, thank you.

In 2014, seeing children’s poetry categorised under ‘jokes and horror’, MMU’s brilliant Writing School team and Kaye Tew at the Manchester Children’s Book Festival, transformed, for one year, the prestigious Manchester Prize into a competition to support children’s poets. Judged by myself and poets, Imtiaz Dharker and Philip Gross, the best poems formed, Let in the Stars. This beautiful anthology, with a forward by Carol Ann Duffy, was nominated for the CLiPPA prize – testimony to all the illustrators and poets such as Carole Bromley, Ashley Gill, Chrissie Gittins, Matt Goodfellow, Louise Grieg, Sue Hardy-Dawson – to name but a few. Imagine how wonderful it is now, to be ordering these writers’ books for the MPL collection.

The collection touches on so many topics, there’s no doubt it will reflect our young reader’s lives. With books like Our Difficult Sunlight: A Guide to Poetry, Literacy, & Social Justice in Classroom & Community, From Medusa To The Sky: Teaching Writing To Children With Special Needs, and Somos Como Las Nubes, (We Are Like The Clouds), Poems About Immigration, we are confident that the collection relates to both the public and the personal. Here, children and parents, all our readers, will have a safe, creative place to explore the world through poetry – no longer simply a category within a library, but a library within a category. I can’t wait to see you there.

A huge thank you to Mandy Coe for writing this far-reaching blog feature.

We are delighted to welcome performance poet and author Laura Dockrill to the YLG blog alongside Gwen Millward to talk about their new book Butterfly Brain.  Part cautionary tale and part lithe and lyrical exploration of the ways in which memory and dreams contribute to our make-up, it is a beautifully written, illustrated and produced book that leaves a lasting impression upon the minds of readers.   

Congratulations on the publication of Butterfly Brain it feels a really special book with some profound comments on the impact of keeping feelings secret, on dreams and on memories.

LAURA: Ah thanks so much. I’m so excited about it. 


 Please can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

LAURA: I’m an author from south London. My love for writing and storytelling began at a very young age where I would love making up stories and scribbling plays for my younger sister and brother. As a child I would always keep a sketch book, scrap book and note pad by my bed and would constantly be keeping notes, writing poetry and stories, drawing, cutting and scribbling. I was a nosy, curious child. Obsessed with people watching and conversation. I even transcribed one of my mum’s phone conversations to my grandma without her knowing! I guess this was all a love that never really went away. I looked to writers of all disciplines - from Jacqueline Wilson, Benjamin Zephaniah, Roald Dahl and Carol Ann Duffy to cookbooks, film script, theatre, poetry and music. I love lyrics and would enjoy listening to the inspiration behind a song- punk, Bowie and soul. My dad would always encourage me to research the artists that I liked. To pick up a dictionary and learn a new word. My mum makes documentaries, so I think that’s where my love for character came from. The two smushed together made for a very eager, brightly coloured, overly excited, untactful spy. I’m very grateful to do my job. 

GWEN: I grew up in Wales and went to a Welsh speaking school in a tiny village called Llanfair Caereinion - go on! try and say it. My parents are both quite arty - writer Mum and artist Dad, so I found myself doing both and loved it (I wasn't very academic - I was really bad at maths, still am). I used to draw lots of leafy things and wildlife and wrote short stories about cats. 

I studied illustration in Edinburgh which was an amazing experience for an 18-year-old straight out of a tiny village. This stretched my brain and arty-muscles and helped me figure out how to hone my drawing and writing. When I was 25, I got my first picture book contract with Puffin books. It was incredibly exciting, but my agent reminded me not to give up my day job (which at the time was temping in an insurance company in Bristol, not my area of expertise!) and it took another few years before I was able to concentrate solely on writing and illustrating. To date I've written and illustrated three of my own books and illustrated 14 picture books and 13 pre-teen fiction books. I have lots of other books in the pipeline including another two of my own - which I cannot WAIT to get started on! One involves monsters. I'm excited.

Can you introduce us to the book and to Gus the main character?

LAURA: Sure. As a writer of children books I spend a lot of time (usually) doing school visits. It’s a really important and precious part of the job as it reminds you what children are actually like. They are changing and growing all the time. You learn a lot from them. How robust and resilient they are especially. How genuine! Physically being inside a school is also very evocative for our own memories- the smell of the crayons, the sugar paper, the paints - the dining hall- the savoury smell of rice and potatoes and custard. Of biscuit and pencil sharpenings. The noise of squeaky rubber on school halls. Of laughter and shouting and the triumphant clang of an out of tune piano in a school hall with a school assembly singing. And I forgot how much kids sit back on their chairs! It’s a little thing but they are always at it. Always being told off for it! When my little brother hector was little he would do this and once he pushed too far and split his head! I remember seeing his hair. Angelic white curls drenched in blood! And the stitches. I think that’s always stuck with me- and something I ALWAYS love to bring out to the kids in school! 


Gus has some pretty big things happening in his life.  How important do you feel it is to approach difficult situations in books for children and young people and are there any considerations in your approach?

LAURA: It’s extremely important. Books were my first friend. For many children they are solace, wisdom and companionship. They teach us how to love- to be thoughtful and ask questions. It is important that we tell stories that children can relate to with characters they identity with that share the same interests, aspirations and fears as them. It would be a lie if we pretended that life was totally blissful all the time. It has its tough bits and pain but we can show a child that they are not alone. That they are not weird or broken. And that in itself helps. Books teach us how to put our feelings and emotions into words- and that is such a vital life skill. Books are vitamins for the brain. 


Gwen: How did you respond to the story and character of Gus and were there any challenges in this?

GWEN: When I first read the text for Butterfly Brain I was really stuck by how fresh and raw Laura's words were. It's a heart breaking story but she tells it without soppyness or saccharine tone. It's gritty and painful and is straight to the point. Gus is a young boy in so much turmoil but can't unlock all that pain. It seemed right to reflect that in the drawings, which are quite edgy and dark I think. I have to admit I was in floods of tears towards the end of the book, trying to draw Gus as a baby with his Mum was hard to do through leaky eyes. I was a mess. I think also being a Mum to a 7 year old boy myself made it feel quite close to home - it really tugged hard at the old heart strings. 


Gwen: Can you tell us a little about your artistic technique?

 GWEN: The final images were drawn digitally, but initially sketched out in pen and ink. I used quite a strong dark line to outline the characters. This softens ever-so-slightly in the latter half of the book to reflect Gus's emotions softening and becoming less gloomy.

Laura: There’s a real sense of playfulness in the language of the book, which makes it very fun to read, did you enjoy writing it, were there any parts that you particularly enjoyed writing?

LAURA: Ah thanks! Yes I always spend a lot of time reading the work out loud. I write a lot in my head without paper and pen - in the bath or when walking or cooking. So the work always have a sense of rhythm and musicality to it. As I am inspired by storytelling and words in general- not just books- it is important to me that the work is illustrative and theatrical. That is not still and stiff on the page but dances and jiggles about. That people can feel the words in their mouth as though they are at a restaurant tasting a meal. When writing, a story does not just translate through the words alone but the order the words appear in and how they fit together too. 


It feels like there are some visual and written influences – the opening has similarities to Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary tales  (poor old Rebecca who slammed doors for fun and perished), and visually there are some similarities to the unsettling work of Edward Gorey.  Were any works or artists a particular inspiration?

LAURA: I’m so glad you picked up on that. Yes I am a very big fan of the macabre and Avant Garde, fairy tales, Greek mythology, folk lore and fables. Cautionary tales! I love Shockheaded Peter which actually has similar stories but I wanted to make sure that I delivered the real caution- which is to remind us to take care of our mental health as well as our ‘physical’ self- which is a harder thing to write about especially for little ones. And that the brain and body are connected as one. It’s about trauma and grief. Using the guise of smashing a head open as a realisation of grief.

GWEN:  I am a huge fan of Edward Gorey and I’m sure somehow in my subconscious his illustrations might have influenced me! I think Laura’s text inspired me mostly, though. Her language is very visual and I think I’m pretty dark, to be honest. It was a bit of a dream come true to be asked to illustrate this, I feel hugely lucky.


There’s some very profound comments around the role memory plays in defining who we are. Our members are librarians, do you have a favourite childhood memory of libraries and reading?

LAURA: You know I have met so many incredible librarians over the last ten years. Librarians that pick you up at 5am in the pouring rain for a day or touring schools, that carry the heaviest of boxes of books from their car. And back again. That sign your name in with a grin. That squeeze you in the back of their mini squished up next to their baby’s car seat and picnic blankets. Umbrellas and dog hair! Always smiling. Always talking about their favourite books. I have met librarians that have shown me to best shops in their villages- led me towards leopard print shoes and vintage dresses. Bought me the best carrot cake, hot chocolate and even gin in tins! I have met librarians that have INFLUENCE. Power. That can save a little child’s life by listening and sharing and offering that safe warm glow of the library arms to keep them safe like literary lighthouses! Librarians that know it all but say nothing and then speak up when it truly matters. That remember a young person’s name. That order that special book for them. That make them reading lists. That lend them pens and photocopy for them. That help with maths homework. That share satsumas behind the front desk. 

I’ve met librarians that make the best cups of tea in the world. The greatest cheese sandwiches. Encouraged and supported. Been loyal. And engaged. Get the best coffee shortbread biscuits in. That are soft and gentle and cosy. That speak in hushed tones when you’re reading only to bellow down the hall and electrify a gaggle of noisy kids in the hallway and put them ALL in their place. Librarians in the most incredible of fancy dress costumes. That have been at a school or in a community long enough to be mistaken for the building itself. Then those are new that simply LOVE books and want to make a difference. That have moved with the times. The change. Seen people come and go. Remain constant. Capable of putting one book in the right hands that could change a life forever.

GWEN: My memories of libraries and librarians are very fond ones. I would go with my mum or gran to the local, which was tiny but perfect. We also had a library bus that would visit when I was really small (Wales used to have lost of these). There wasn’t a massive selection, but it was fun having a chat with the librarian that ran it and a novelty to hop on a tiny bus and look at books.

 Thank you so much to Laura and Gwen for the fantastic interview and thanks to Piccadilly Press for the opportunity.