CLPE Poetry Award 2012 awarded to Rachel Rooney

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Rachel Rooney has won the CLPE Poetry Award for her collection The Language of Cat. She was presented with the prize earlier this evening Tuesday 24 July at a ceremony at CLPE in London.

Rachel Rooney trained as a special needs teacher and currently works with children with Autistic Spectrum Condition. She has been short-listed for the Belmont Poetry Prize, commended in the 2010 Escalator poetry competition, and had poems published in children’s poetry anthologies. The Language of Cat is her first book of collected poems.

The judges for the Award this year were Philip Gross, winner of the 2011 CLPE Poetry Award for Off Road to Everywhere; Morag Styles, Professor of Children’s Poetry, University of Cambridge; Fiona Waters, Editorial Director of Troubadour, The Travelling Book Company and winner of the 2008 CLPE Poetry Award for Why does my Mum always iron a crease in my jeans?

Describing The Language of Cat the judges said, ‘These poems have a subtle distinctive speaking voice, lighting up shifts of thought and feeling that young readers will recognize but that clichés would conceal. Rachel Rooney relishes and shares the craft of poetry; gradually you spot exacting games of form and language beneath a surface that seems simple enough for youngest readers to approach, and the poems will grow in the reader’s mind with re-reading, year by year.’

Poet Laureate and CLPE Poetry Award 2010 winner, Carol Ann Duffy added, ‘Rachel Rooney's poetry collection for children is a well-crafted, stimulating and un-patronising box of delights, always accessible and constantly inventive.’

The CLPE Poetry Award is now in its 9^th year and was launched in 2003 to highlight children’s poetry and ensure that it receives proper recognition.

Four collections were shortlisted for the award:
John Agard: Goldilocks on CCTV, illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura, Frances Lincoln, £12.99
Brian Moses: Holding the Hands of Angels, Salt Publishing, £6.99
Rachel Rooney: The Language of Cat, illustrated by Ellie Jenkins, Frances Lincoln, £5.99
Fred Sedgwick: Here Comes the Poetry Man, Salt Publishing, £6.99

The CLPE Poetry Award is sponsored by The Travelling Book Company. For further information visit www.clpe.co.uk/poetry/poetry-award