To celebrate Karl Nova being the first poet to win the Ruth Rendell Award, he has shared some of his top tips on getting children into poetry!
The Ruth Rendell Award is a yearly award given to a writer who has had a very big influence on literacy in the UK in the past year run by the National Literacy Trust and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).
Karl Nova is a well-loved poet whose debut book Rhythm And Poetry won the CLiPPA poetry prize 2018
What are some easy ways of getting my children having a go at creating poetry? Here are Karl’s top tips:
- Think of a theme, write down 10 words associated with that theme and use them to write a poem. It can rhyme, but it doesn’t have to!
- Pick an object you can see while out walking and try and make a rhyming couplet about it
- Try writing a haiku. This is a type of short poem from Japan made up of three lines. The first line must only have 5 syllables, the second must have 7 syllables and the third must have 5 syllables.
- Check out the poetry section in your local library, see what other people have been inspired to write about
- Take something you’ve been thinking about, worrying about, or trying to make sense of and write down your thoughts in whatever form comes to you naturally, just give it a go!