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.