The Bookseller.com

21st November 2008

Michael Rosen: Poetry in motion

11.06.07 Caroline Horn

Michael Rosen at first misheard the phone call from Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti telling him he was the new children's laureate--he thought he was being recruited for a project with the civil rights group. But once the news did sink in, he was "over the moon—every cliché you can think of. Thrilled, delighted, wonderful."

Rosen replaces novelist Jacqueline Wilson in the role and, like Wilson, he has the enthusiasm and energy it demands. His arms are constantly in motion to back up his words, his eyes bright and his smile ready to meet the greetings from those around us. We are sitting in the confined space of a table at the Poetry Society in London and our interview is punctuated by greetings from other tables around us.

Rosen has a busy two years ahead of him. As well as being a celebration of his own work, the role of children's laureate brings a hefty job spec with it--to promote children's literature to as wide an audience as possible. He will also consider how he can work alongside the US' first "national ambassador for young people's literature" to help promote children's literature.

What will drive him over the next two years is what has driven him for the past 30 years, he says--"a passion about writing and performing, and sharing words, especially poetry, with young audiences."

He describes himself as a man who is "in love with words" and this has taken him from writing into teaching, broadcasting (he used to work on the Radio 4 children's books programme, "Treasure Islands", and now presents the "Word of Mouth" programme) and performing.

Rosen's work encompasses non-fiction, novels, picture books, stories from other cultures and poetry. He has been involved in the creation of more than 140 books, including We're Going on a Bear Hunt and Quick, Let's Get Out of Here. He is currently writing a biography of Roald Dahl, to be published by Puffin in 2008. He has also written for adults, including Carrying the Elephant: A Memoir of Love and Loss, following the sudden death of his teenage son from meningitis.

Spotlight on poetry

Rosen believes the time is right to shine a spotlight on poetry and to remind the world of what children's poetry should be about. "I think things used to be better for children's poetry--especially during the 1980s, when schools and publishers realised that poetry was infectious stuff and they were unrestricted in how they introduced it to children."

That changed, he believes, when the National Curriculum and the Literacy Strategy were implemented in the 1990s. "Now schools have to use individual poems as something that the teacher must interrogate in a particular way to meet a particular requirement—find adjectives or alliteration, or some other 'learning outcome'."

Rosen believes this analytical approach has had a serious impact on how poetry is published and that it has been particularly detrimental to individual collections. "Instead of collections by poets, we see more and more anthologies around particular themes, like dinosaurs, but that isn't how poetry is written. Poems start with, 'I'd like to write a poem about...' Poets speak from their own experiences."

As children's laureate, he believes he can help to change the current perception of poetry with some key ideas—including how poetry is sold. "Poetry sales are struggling in the trade and I'd love to speak to retailers about how we can work together to change that."

Waterstone's is a key sponsor of the children's laureate role and children's buying manager Sarah Clarke acknowledges that selling poetry is tough these days. "It is true that poetry sales are difficult although if you include the right books in the right promotion, you can appeal to children," she says. "This is an area we will be working on with the new laureate."

Rosen also has ideas for a dedicated website for children's poetry, where children can contribute their own work and read poems by others, and he hopes to work with the National Association for the Teaching of English to help build "poetry-friendly class rooms". He is also looking into an idea for library-based exhibitions to celebrate the history of children's poetry in the UK.

On the literature trail

As children's laureate, Rosen will focus on children's literature in general and here, he would like a much more local focus on children's books and authors. He points out that where he lives in Hackney there is a trail of famous children's names from Hans Christian Andersen, who lived there in the 1830s, to Daniel Defoe, and that the first performance of "Romeo and Juliet" was given there. 

"Wouldn't it be good to have local trails of children's literature?" he asks. "Libraries have fantastic records of local figures and that would be a great starting point for this kind of project."

He is determined that his two-year programme will have significant and permanent outcomes, particularly for children's poetry. "I want to see children's poetry loosened from its shackles and for people to become freer and easier with poetry," he says.

"I want there to be many more poets in schools and more poetry written by children at school and at home. And I want there to be more diversity in the poems that children get to see—other cultures, the present, the past—we have such a great heritage of poetry."

Above all, he wants more children to hear and see poetry, not just to read it off the page. "I have been doing performance poetry for 30 years and I know how children respond to it. You look at their faces when you start and it's like an infection—it spreads across their face, through their bodies, around them. They move, they light up. Wouldn't it be lovely to see more and more of that?"

Photo by Laurence Cendrowicz 

Todays Picks Caroline Horn children's Michael Rosen Children's Laureate