Coelho embarks on poetry celebration in first campaign as Waterstones Children's Laureate

Joseph Coelho is launching a campaign celebrating poetry as he begins his tenure as Waterstones Children’s Laureate.

The author and playwright will roll out Poetry Prompts in partnership with BookTrust, on National Poetry Day, 6th October. Through the campaign, Coelho aims to break down the fear often associated with reading and writing and show why poems can be for everyone.

From National Poetry Day onwards, Coelho will share a weekly Poetry Prompt video inspiring readers to write poems and to become poets. Each video will see Coelho exploring a different subject or technique – such as similes, onomatopoeia and figurative language.

The first Poetry Prompt will tie in with the environmental theme of this year’s National Poetry Day and will see Coelho creating a new poem inspired by the sounds of the environment.

Each video will be less than 10 minutes long and will be shared on the BookTrust website each Monday morning, with teachers encouraged to inspire students to start writing their own poem. BookTrust will be distributing Poetry Prompts posters to almost 20,000 primary schools.

“Poetry Prompts is my invitation to the nation, young and old, to become poets," Coelho said. "We turn to poetry at weddings, funerals and births because it goes beyond mere words and translates the soul. But there is baggage associated with poetry that I want everyone to put down – to allow everyone to reclaim the birth right of poet. So often I’ve met children and adults scared to put pen to paper, terrified of ‘getting it wrong’ – this has repercussions in all aspects of life. I want to show everyone that poetry is for them, that we can enjoy the rules and break the rules.”
The trust and Coelho will also be collaborating with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education to create resources to support Poetry Prompts. They will be available to download on the BookTrust website and free for use in schools and libraries.

Diana Gerald, c.e.o. of BookTrust, commented: “At BookTrust we believe all children should be able to enjoy the lifechanging benefits that reading and sharing stories can bring. Poetry can be a powerful gateway into storytelling and can help children to develop their creativity, imagination and inspire them to read, write or perform their own stories to express a whole range of emotions or topics that they are interested in.

"We’re incredibly proud to support Joseph Coelho on his mission to break the misconceptions about poetry and hope children and families are inspired to celebrate poetry in all its forms and use it to find their own voice.”

National Poetry Day also marks publication for Coelho’s latest collection Blow a Kiss, Catch a Kiss: Poems to share with Children aged 3+ (Anderson Press) and his YA verse novel The Boy Lost in the Maze (Otter-Barry Books).