Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It?

‘They’re crossing our class/from the front to the back-/I heard it from Amit…’ – so starts a poem that illustrates the Chinese Whispers so much part of classroom life… each scenario getting more and more extraordinary. Well, teacher is expecting a baby and now delivered… so yes, ‘The baby was ordered from Amazon Prime/Her name is Alexa/My aunt saw the van./ Well MY uncle knows the delivery man’. Here is a poem captures the tone of this debut collection by Sarah Ziman in which she reflects the voices of children across a school year. This is a lively engaging collection in which the poems – some long, some short, even haikus, rhyming, free verse – a variety of forms, are all designed to grab the attention. Ziman avoids the obviously comic, the scatological, the pratfalls for a more nuanced approach but the humour is still there. The poet is having fun writing these poems and it shows. There is word play, pathos, imagination and clever references to classic works to enjoy. The language is rich but not abstruse. The classroom is captured without condescension and there is no attempt to talk down to the audience. This is a new voice to watch.