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, Otter-Barry Books and A&C Black. 

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, One Week of Seaside Poems, One Week of Pirate Poems, One Week of Puzzle Poems and One Week of History 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.

DINOSAUR SCHOOL

What do dinosaurs learn at carnivore school?
How to swagger and strut, how to cruise and be cool.
They learn gnashing and gashing and gnawing and clawing,
And lashing and dashing and roaring and warring,
And tearing and scaring and ripping and gripping,
And daring and glaring and nipping and flipping,
And chasing and racing and pacing and pulping,
And looming and booming and zooming and gulping,
And stomping and chomping, alarming and harming,
And stamping and champing, attack and disarming.
But at herbivore school what do dinosaurs do?
They learn how to chew,
And to chew,
And to chew.

THE WIVES OF HENRY VIII

King Henry the eighth had a number of wives,
Who mostly had brief or quite miserable lives.
One died, two divorced and two more lost their heads.
Just one beat the odds by surviving instead.

Spain’s Catherine of Aragon, wife number one,
Gave Henry a daughter instead of a son.
He needed an heir and at last he lost hope,
Divorcing his wife and defying the pope.

Then came Anne Boleyn. At first, Henry was keen.
He wooed her with gifts and then made her his queen,
But, one daughter later, unhappily wed,
He charged her with crimes and then… off with her head!

Jane Seymour was next and, oh glorious day,
A son, little Edward, was soon on the way,
An heir at long last, but at terrible cost,
For Jane became sick and, days later, was lost.

Now politics brought Anne of Cleves to the king.
He fancied her portrait, but not the real thing.
You can’t just behead a close ally, of course,
But Henry was swift to demand a divorce.

He thought Catherine Howard was more to his liking,
A lady-in-waiting, both youthful and striking,
But maybe too striking, for once they were wedded,
The rumours soon started and she was beheaded.

The last, Catherine Parr, was both older and calmer,
And steered a safe course through political drama.
The king was now sick and she nursed and advised him,
Befriended his children and, somehow, survived him.