Poetry

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I have always loved writing poetry - a poem I wrote as a child has been included in a Macmillan Christmas anthology, and I published poems before I started writing stories. My poems have appeared in anthologies for publishers including Bloomsbury, Candlestick Press, Macmillan, Scholastic, Collins Children's Books, Oxford University Press and A&C Black. My new poem Good Moon, Bad Moon will be published in the Otter-Barry Books anthology Moonstruck! in June.

I have also written poems for Pearson educational publishers.

My mini eBooks One Week of Christmas Poems, One Week of Dinosaur Poems, One week of Nature Poems, One Week of Space Poems, One Week of Football Poems, One Week of Spooky Poems and One Week of Seaside Poems are available on Amazon Kindle. The first six books in the series are also gathered together in the One Week of Poems Omnibus.

Here are a couple of poems. I'll change them every now and then so come back to see what's new.

THE WISDOM OF THE SNAIL

The ants all complain that I'm terribly slow,
But I haven't got anywhere urgent to go.
I like noticing things as I glide on my slime,
And I don't see a problem with taking my time.
I like watching the sunlight that falls on a leaf,
And the pattern of dapples that dances beneath,
And the puddle of shade, with its coolness and calm,
Where a snail can breathe easily, hidden from harm.

So I don't understand why the ants seem to need
To go scurrying round at a dizzying speed,
And I like to stay perfectly still as they pass,
Just enjoying the soft, springy feel of the grass,
And the delicate breath of the breeze as it glides
From my tickle-proof shell to my sensitive sides,
And the silvery sheen of the pale morning light,
Long before it gets glary and scary and bright.

So my message is this: do not dash on your way,
Stop to look at a leaf, smell a flower every day.
Yes, the thing that I always find works, without fail,
Is slow down, smell the grass, feel the breeze...

Be a snail!

MY LITTLE SISTER

I have a little sister Daisy,
And she often drives me crazy.

She staggers through the sitting room,
Wibble, wobble. Crash! Bang! Boom!
With a sweet and sunny smile,
She turns my toys into a pile
Of broken bits.

And when she's in a messy mood,
She likes to throw around her food.
Giggle, gobble. Splat! Splat! Splat!
Yucky bits of this and that
Drip, drip, drip.

She rubs spaghetti in her hair,
And dribbles on my teddy bear,
And sleeps the wrong way up in bed,
And thinks her pants go on her head,
And my pants too.

She hides our stuff around the house:
The door key, the computer mouse,
And my left shoe.

But when she's fast asleep upstairs,
Curled softly round her teddy bears,
I creep into her room and kiss her,
Stroke her sleepy cheek and whisper,
"I do love you, Little Sister."