Hannah Lowe's Top Poetry Writing Tips

Forward prize-shortlisted poet Hannah Lowe, who will be judging this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year competition, offers her top tips to young poetry writers

Hannah Lowe

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 July 2013 12.25 BST

Hannah Lowe, shortlisted for the prestigious Forward prize for poetry for her anthology Chick, will be judging the Foyles Young Poets competition. There's still time to enter!

1. Read!

Read lots of different poems, from books at school, home, the library, bookshops, or poems you find online. The Poetry Library in London and the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh are great places to start. Look at their websites if you can't visit them. Read poems for adults as well as for children. What do you like? What makes a good poem in your opinion? Read poems aloud so you can hear their sound effects and music. Learn a poem off by heart and see how you find reciting it from memory. More . . .

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Now it's your turn. Write your own poem. Have fun, I always do.

Bright Kids are Budding Poets

Budding poets at Bright Kids in Crabbs Cross

BRIGHT Kids children at Crabbs Cross recently entered the Young Writers; My Nursery Rhymes Creative Writing Competition. More . . .

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Here at Koetry for Pids, Max Tell features
a few inspirational articles
about poetry writing for kids

as well as his own inspirational blog posts.

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To read a few of Max's poems, check out The Land of Graws.

Max Tell / Koetry for Pids / G11 / Where Ideas Come From

Max Tell, poet and award winning songwriter publishes 
a new Koetry for Pids blog each week.

Max also features inspirational articles about poetry
and other artistic activities for kids.

39 Ways to Paint with Your Kids

A little change of pace from poetry to visual arts.

Who says you have to use a plain old brush for painting? Part of raising creative kids is setting them up to  use items in new ways, to look at something and wonder, “What can I make with that?!” A great starting point is to expose them to simple projects likes these and create. Here are 39 different things you can paint with all with different painting activities for kids. Each item takes you to a full tutorial of a project where we used the specific tool. More . . . 

After the painting is done, perhaps it will inspire a poem.

Rhymes for the Young / Kenn Nesnitt

Spokane’s Kenn Nesbitt brings the nation’s kids the gift of poetry - Eli Francovich

Kenn Nesbitt has been named the children's poet laureate. [Photo: Jennifer DeBarros]

 

“For every line of poetry I have to think of 10 different ways to say it, to get the exact, best right way,” Nesbitt says. “Computer programming is the same way. You want to write code that is elegant, functional and concise and does what you want to do in the best possible way.” More . . .

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Now it's your turn. Write your own poem. Have fun, I did.

Don't forget to share your poems with family and friends. And don't forget to edit, edit, edit.