Poetry Power
Charlotte Hacking introduces the shortlist for this year’s CLiPPA, the best new poetry for children and young people.
Poetry is a wonderful medium for engaging children in reading and writing, however it can often be overlooked in favour of more traditional stories or non-fiction in classrooms, bookshops and in the home.
At the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, we are proud to be the National Poetry Centre for Primary Schools, and our Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award (CLiPPA) is the only national award to celebrate poetry published for children. This year’s shortlist celebrates a broad spectrum of what poetry is and what it can do for children.
Blow a Kiss, Catch a Kiss by Joseph Coelho, illustrated by Nicola Killen (Andersen Press) is a wonderful example of the joy of early play with rhyme and song. These are the foundations of a quality early reading experience. Joining in with nursery rhymes, jingles and songs is often children’s first way in to connecting spoken words to print on the page. Listening to and joining in with poems such as Baby Exercise and Avocado! Avocado! delight children in the musicality of language, as well as encouraging them to use their whole bodies to engage in the action on the page.
There are also many poems focussed on supporting children in recognising and dealing with their emotions, such as This is… and Take a Deep Breath. These poems actively contextualise children’s growing understanding of self-regulation, an important aspect of learning.
Poems in the collection tune in to the lives and direct experiences of children, enabling them to respond to poems read by connecting them with their own lives, whether this be a trip to the supermarket in Shopping Adventure, engaging with the elements in The Whooshing Wind or closely observing nature in Pigeons.
Ted Kooser is a former US Poet Laureate and joins prize-winning poet Connie Wanek to create Marshmallow Clouds, with evocative illustrations by Richard Jones. The poems within the collection are a celebration of the natural world and the power of poetry to express our connections and experiences with the world around us.
Poignant and judiciously chosen language paints vivid pictures of a range of scenes and experiences, such as the tingling excitement of 
watching a Meteor Shower or watching the Autumn leaves fall In November. You feel part of each and every moment described, like you’re sitting alongside the poets watching the Winter Ponies, with ‘frost on their eyelashes like white mascara’ or picking up Marshmallows, ‘soft and lightly powdered like a grandmother’s cheek’.
In a world full of noise, rush and busyness, this beautiful collection encourages us to stop and look at the world around us, taking in the small details with a poet’s eye.
For the third time in as many years, Matt Goodfellow appears on the CLiPPA shortlist, this time with Let’s Chase Stars Together. This quietly presented collection speaks with care and consideration to its intended audience, not only in its topics and themes – such as friendships, loss, school, and growing up – but even more powerfully in showcasing the power of poetry to work through experiences and express emotions.
Poems like Jake, Callum and The Wolf explore themes, issues and emotions that pupils may or may not have direct experience of, but that they can connect with and empathise with on an emotional level, showing how poetry can help us to make sense of experiences and to connect with the lives and experiences of others.
Matt’s ability to observe the world poetically is precise yet imaginative, with exceptionally well-chosen metaphors throughout. His pastoral poetry is rich and poignant; poems such as Poem for a New Year, Darker Now and Blackbirds evocatively explore our relationship with nature as humans.
Choose Love by Nicola Davies is a cycle of poems that highlights the experience of those forced to become refugees. The core of the collection was written in 2018 as part of a project with the charity Refugee Trauma Initiative. With the permission of both individual refugees and aid workers, RTI shared with Nicola a number of true and poignant stories, which were then used as the basis for the poems. Over the following years, Nicola has added to this core of poems to create this collection on the theme of forced migration, its wider causes and consequences.
The collection starts with a direct instruction to the reader to Choose Love, highlighting the shared experience of being human and sharing 
compassion for and empathy with our kin, understanding their experience and putting ourselves in their shoes. Petr Horáček’s art throughout complements the sentiment of the collection skilfully – challenging the reader to look more deeply and see beyond initial first impressions to look for recognisable details, which help us make connections with our own lives.
The sections in the book follow the journey of those forced to leave from their Departure to their Arrival and on to the Healing needed to remain hopeful and strong. The urgency of the language in poems like Five Minutes take us directly into moments, forcing us to think from the point of view of another. The Interview is a particularly arresting poem, challenging us to look at multiple viewpoints and why people might behave in the way they do. The closing poem, Unbroken, offers a poignant metaphor for the hope that can still be present amidst the scars of trauma, preventing the collection from tying up in an unrealistically neat conclusion.
The final collection in the shortlist, these are the words by Nikita Gill, is a lyrical and empowering collection for older readers – pre-teens and teenagers will see their lives and experiences directly reflected in Gill’s compelling voice. The poems are arranged according to such themes as sisterhood, family, protest and healing, and although some difficult topics are addressed, a line of hope shines through.
Much of the verse is written in second person, thereby speaking directly to the reader with love, support, and reassurance in themes such as the difficulty of leaving aspects of your childhood behind as you grow older in On the First Wave of Summer, and the sometimes daunting prospect of having your own Space. Other verses address the complexities and different meanings of love, including self-love, offering a safe space for readers to explore facets of themselves, their relationships and emotions. Finding and using your voice and having the confidence to do so if you wish features throughout, in poems like For the Days You Feel Unheard and When They Say You Shouldn’t Talk About It.
The peritext, too, holds the readers’ emotions with care, opening with a content note and closing with a list of related charities. This is a book that serves as a friend or confidante to the reader, saying ‘here is a space just for you’.
The full shortlist will be celebrated and the 2023 winner announced at the award ceremony at The National Theatre in July. As these windows into each text show, it’s going to be hard to choose a winner from this fantastic collection, which showcases the range and breadth of poetry for children of all ages.
A wide range of resources including videos of shortlisted poets, teaching plans and information about poetic forms and devices can be found on CLPE’s website: https://clpe.org.uk/
Schools wishing to shadow this year’s award and enter the shadowing competition for a chance to perform on stage at the award ceremony in July, alongside the shortlisted poets, can find information about the shadowing scheme at: https://clpe.org.uk/poetry/CLiPPA/shadowing_scheme
Charlotte Hacking is the Learning Programme Director and member of the CLiPPA judging panel at CLPE, an independent UK charity dedicated to helping schools develop literacy learning that transforms lives.
Booklist
Blow a Kiss, Catch a Kiss by Joseph Coelho, ill. Nicola Killen, Andersen Press, 978-1839131363, £12.99 hbk
Marshmallow Clouds by Ted Kooser and Connie Wanek, ill. Richard Jones, Walker Books, 978-1529507072, £14.99 hbk
Let’s Chase Stars Together, Matt Goodfellow, Bloomsbury Education, 978-1472993847, £7.99 pbk
Choose Love, Nicola Davies, ill. Petr Horáček, Graffeg Books, 978-1802583779, £16.99 hbk
these are the words, Nikita Gill, Macmillan, 978-1529083606, £7.99 pbk
