Messages

A very positive welcome for this new anthology chosen with 11-15 year-olds in mind. Like Blishen, Naomi Lewis has grouped the poems under broad themes and, also like him, has headed many of these with a line of poetry. Many of the same poets (but not the same poems) appear as in the Blishen collection plus a distinctive presence of more recent writing. Familiar themes of Childhood, Time Passing, Death, Love, Animals are joined by less predictable ones: 'A Host of Furious Fancies', 'Angels, Demons, Phantoms, Dreams'; all to be explored in poems chosen with a sure sense of what will speak to the word-aware adolescent.