We are thrilled to welcome children’s poet Joseph Coelho into The reading Realm to answer a few questions about his gorgeous new collection of poems POEMS ALOUD!

What’s it all about?

I first started writing professionally as a performance poet. Performing poems in cafes and theatres. It was great fun, I was writing new poems every week and pacing my bedroom to commit them to memory and then performing them to live paying audiences. When I started writing Poems Aloud, I wanted to give you, daring reader, a fun and easy way to perform your poems. So, in the book there are lots of simple tips to get you using your voice and body in new and exciting ways to make your poems pop.

Can you tell us about a favourite poem in the book?

One of my favourite poems in the book is This Bear, a poem designed to be read very slowly. A poem inspired by an article I read about a bear that had spent its life in captivity being released into the wild. I also wanted to this poem because one of my earliest poem writing memories is from when I was twelve years old. I wrote a poem for a school competition – I have since lost the poem and can’t remember how it went but I do remember it was about a bear having a horrible time in captivity and I remember the title, it was called Unbearable! Daniel Gray-Barnett’s illustration for this poem is one of my favourites too. I love the way the bear is looking dreamily up at a pink sky as white birds sail off towards the sun, it makes me think that the bear in this poem is going to be alright.