This Month Of Poetry thing I’m doing includes various members of the group setting a challenge for each Saturday in January and this week was my turn. Here’s what I came up with:

Recently my mum and I were reminiscing about me as a kid and how far back my love for T. S. Eliot and A. A. Milne goes. There exists, on an ancient cassette tape, a recording of me at two years old, reciting “Brownie” and I don’t remember not knowing the importance of “The Naming of Cats”.

Consequently I’ve been thinking about poetry as part of early oral storytelling and about how much fun it is to read aloud kids’ books that are written in really good verse. And how I can still recite most of Slinky Malinki a good 15 years after the last time anyone asked me to read it to them.

So this week’s challenge is to write a poem that is intended to be read aloud. It doesn’t have to be for kids, it could be more in the adult poetry slam vein. If you feel able to I would absolutely love to hear your poem being read, so bonus points for posting a video or audio recording of it!