Calling budding Michael Rosens

Could you write a poem for primary school children? As part of our new initiative - Marsden, the Poetry Village – we’ve inspired local primary schools to bring poetry even more into the pupils’ routine. Not that they took much persuading, as the schools we have spoken to so far are clear of the value and the fun of poetry for children. Marsden Junior School has created a web page ready for your poems and we hope others will follow suit.

So, could you write one? Bear in mind, that writing for children isn’t necessarily a soft option compared to the adult version. As Walter de La Mare said: only the rarest kind of best in anything can be good enough for the young.

If  you’ve written a poem for children (up to 12 years old), you can upload it in this blog so primary teachers can decide if to use it for their school. To be clear, you are offering these poems for schools to use free of charge within three years of the date you uploaded them, subject to the above criteria.

To upload a poem for this experiment, please tag it poetry for schools.

Participating schools will be asked to credit the poet, to use the poem only within the school and for non-profit use. Copyright remains with the originating poet. Further use of the work must only be undertaken with the copyright holder’s permission.

We require schools to confirm they are using the poem, that it will clearly identify the poet, confirm it is being used for non-profit purposes and only within the school, to provide links to its use on the primary school poetry group page, and state clearly that its use is as part of Write Out Loud’s Marsden, the Poetry Village initiative.

Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you and receiving your poems. I shall post one of my own afer posting this, as a meagre example.

Julian Jordon

Marsden, the Poetry Village

A Write Out Loud Initiative