Success in Poetry by Heather Haylock

Each year, for National Poetry Day in August, The Poets XYZ (look them up on facebook) run a poetry competition for those who write poetry for children. A different word is used as a theme prompt each year. This year’s word was ‘Leap’.

I took a while to come up with an idea with the ‘Leap’ theme. I wrote two poems, one to do with that famous quote, ‘One small leap for man . . .’, and another about the cow who jumped over the moon.  You can enter up to three poems in The Poets XYZ competition, so I wanted to come up with one more. 

I love libraries and I love what librarians do in our schools and communities. When I read a book I often feel like I’ve leapt into another world. So I decided to write a poem inviting children to leap into the library to see what they could discover there. It took some effort to narrow down the stories I would highlight in the text (there were so many jostling for position!), and a few didn’t make it (I’m going to save them for another time). Crafting the rhyme took time, with lots of reading out loud and making notations on the hard copy to check for scansion. Every stanza summarised one book or story. It took a lot of crossings out and rewriting to sum a story up in just two lines – and lines that rhymed! I hope readers have fun working out which stories and characters are hidden within the poem.

I was very excited when I learned that ‘Leap into the Library’ was one of the fourteen shortlisted poems. There may have been a happy dance in the kitchen 😊 

Judge, Bill Nagelkerke, had a mammoth job, with around eighty poems to choose from. Over a couple of days, the first, second and third prize winning poems were published on The Poets XYZ facebook page. They are stunning. Such creative takes on the theme of ‘Leap’.

I didn’t want my poem to fall into obscurity and decided to enter it into The Dirigible Balloon – a website that provides poetry for children and educators to use and enjoy. I entered three poems for The Dirigible Balloon’s UK Poetry Week special edition and was thrilled to have all three accepted. They are, ‘Leap into the Library’, ‘The Water Cycle’ (shortlisted in last year’s The Poets XYZ competition), and ‘Bugs at the Table’ (which I wrote as part of the 100 poems in 100 days challenge earlier this year).

I wouldn’t call myself a particularly experienced poet (even though my Granny McFlitter picture books are stories in rhyme – they are totally different things to poems). This year, one of my challenges for myself has been to experiment more with poetry. I’ve been reading a lot of poetry and dabbling with writing it. One thing I love about poetry is that you can write a piece that is about an idea. With stories, you need to follow a story arc – it’s not enough just to have a singular idea to write about. But a poem can dwell on and explore an idea in its own little world.

For anyone wanting to develop their craft and experiment with writing poetry for children, I’d highly recommend following The Poets XYZ on Facebook, and The Dirigible Balloon on X (Twitter) and at the site https://dirigibleballoon.org/ for more opportunities to join in the poetry fun!

Deb Hinde used Canva to magic up this great image of the poem for me . . . I really must get around to learning how to use Canva myself!