Poetry weekend at the Children’s Book Festival

Mandy Coe

POETRY for children will be celebrated at the Manchester Children’s Book Festival this weekend. 

A series of free events across the city will encourage people young and old to celebrate their love of children’s poetry, with appearances by star poets and open mic slots.

Events will take place at Manchester Central Library, Waterstones on Deansgate, Simply Books in Bramhall and Urmston Bookshop.

Manchester Writing School tutor Mandy Coe said: “Poetry for children brings literature to life and into our lives in ways no other genre can. Short, re-readable, visual, rhythmic, multi-cultural, subversive, funny, inclusive... it’s no wonder children love poetry. It just might be the ‘official language of child’!”

Celebrating new poetry

The weekend-long event is inspired by the Manchester Writing School’s children’s poetry anthology Let In The Stars. In 2013 Mandy Coe approached Dame Carol-Ann Duffy, Writing School director and Creative Director of the Manchester Children’s Book Festival, for help with a mission to resist the decline in the number of publishers launching new poetry for children, and the lack of opportunities for writers of children’s poems to reach an audience in print.

Inspired by Mandy’s passion, Carol Ann and the Manchester Children’s Book Festival team launched an international search for the best new poetry written for children. Thousands of poems were submitted and the work of 30 poets – based in the UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Uganda, and the USA – was selected by Mandy, Imtiaz Dharker and Philip Gross, and collected into a beautifully illustrated anthology, Let in the Stars.

This weekend, children (and adults) will be able to take part in a poetry writing workshop with Mandy, hear readings by writers Chrissie Gittins, Dominic Berry and Robert Paul Weston and showcase their own poetry at open mic slots.

Children from local schools have also been voting on their favourite poems, illustrating them and being inspired to write new ones, and an exhibition of work will take place at Urmston Bookshop all weekend.

Festival event

Mandy said: “To whet your appetite, why not visit the children’s section of the Poetry Archive or the BBC’s ‘Talking Poetry’ to listen to some poetry?” 

The Manchester Children’s Book Festival is organised by Manchester Metropolitan University, with many events held on the university’s Oxford Road campus, as well as at partner venues including Manchester Central Library and the People’s History Museum.

It launched in 2010, and was held biennially until 2014. From 2015 the festival will become an annual event.
The festival has previously featured appearances from authors including Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo, Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen.

For more information, visit www.mcbf.org.uk.

Notes to editors

For more information, or to speak to anyone involved in the poetry weekend, contact Kat Dibbits in the Manchester Metropolitan University press office on 0161 247 5278 or email K.Dibbits@mmu.ac.uk.