Sally Murphy's Blog, page 24

Readalong Post #4: Pearl’s Prizes

Welcome back to Readalong with Sally. I’m having lots of fun sharing Pearl Verses the World with readers old and new, and I hope you’re enjoying it too. Thanks to all who have posted on previous posts and on social media. My post about the covers got lots of responses over on my Facebook page as well as Instagram. It seems the Australian cover was unanimously the favourite.

Today I’d like to talk about the reception the book had when it was published. It wasn’t my first book, but the response from readers, reviewers, schools and  booksellers was unlike anything I’d experienced with my earlier books. I may have commented (more than once) that it took 20 years to become an overnight success story – but gosh it was fun, and still is.

One thing that happened that was really unexpected was that Pearl hadn’t long been out when it started being shortlisted for, and even winning, awards. First was the children’s category of the Indie Award, 2009.  Later it was  an Honour Book in the 2010 CBCA Awards, Best Book of the Year for Upper Primary in the Speech Pathology Awards, Winner of the Young Readers Category of the Family Therapy  Award,  and was  shortlisted for both the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and the WA Premier’s Literary Awards.  It was an amazing year. So much love for my little book. My book was an award winning book! And I was an award winning author.

Awards mean a lot because they let an author know that their book has been judged by a group of experts, against some strong criteria,  as being worthy of a trophy, or a certificate, sometimes a cheque, and often a sticker for the front cover.  They can boost sales figures, because librarians, teachers and parents will often purchase based on awards.  And they say to publishers that they have done a wise thing investigating their time and money into that author, that book.

So, yes, I have enjoyed the awards. But the ones that have meant the most have perhaps gathered the least publicity.

In 2010 Pearl won both the Hoffman Award, in the West Australian Young Readers’ Book Awards (WABYRA) and the Children’s Book Council Junior Judges Children’s Choice Award.

What was so special about these awards? Easy! These awards were won because young readers – the people I write for – read and voted for Pearl.  When the target audience likes your book enough to vote for it against some pretty stiff competition, you know you’re doing something right.

Awards aside, though, stickers and trophies and certificates and votes mean a  lot. But over the eleven years since Pearl was published there have been hundreds of moments when I’ve realised that my book has been read and loved: chatting to a young reader at a festival or school visit; seeing a girl hugging a copy of Pearl she’d just bought; emails and letters from readers; stories from parents & grandparents about connections made.  Every one of those moments feels like an award of its own.

Do you have a story of a child (or an adult!) reading Pearl Verses the World? I’d love to hear it here or on Facebook.

Thanks for dropping by.

 

 

 

Readalong Post #3: Covering Covers

Welcome back to my Readalong. Today I’m thinking about covers. There’s an old saying ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’. But while I agree with the spirit of that adage, those who work in publishing and bookselling probably know that good covers do make books sell, while, shall I say, less good covers can harm a book’s chances. Because, rightly or wrongly, buyers, and borrowers too, do judge books on their first appearances, choosing which books to pick up and browse, often based on what they look like.

So, to the cover of Pearl Verses the World:

I loved it the first time I saw it, and have loved it ever since. I love that Heather Potter brought the character of Pearl to life with such a deft, tender touch, and perching her on the world was genius.  I also love the font choice, and the colour palette too. Heather’s illustrations and the design team at Walker Books Australia together creating something that I think is pretty special. I feel like it’s okay to be a bit biased about my own book, because I had absolutely nothing to do with this brilliant design.

However, when Pearl was published in the UK, the team at Walker UK felt that the cover was not quite right for their market. Not only that, they didn’t like my title, which they felt was a bit too ‘clever’ with its play on words. So, they shortened the title, used a different illustration and muted the colours down to very subtle stripes:

And what did I think? Apart from feeling sad about the title change, I loved this cover too. I think the tag line and the illustration gave a strong sense of the book’s essence.

Over in the United States, however, Candlewick Press seemed to prefer the original title and cover – their change was to produce it as a hardcover book, which was pretty special.

Back to my point about judging books by covers. If I can judge the covers by how many of each version sold, then it would seem the original cover was the best one. But that ignores the fact that in my home country my publisher and I were able to promote more directly and more widely and, when it was shortlisted or won a variety of awards (more about those in another post), that also boosted sales.

For me, I prefer the original cover because it was the first I saw, and it’s the one that settled in my heart, but I like the others too – and if someone is reading my book and spending time with Pearl, then  any of the covers has done its job.

Which do you like?

 

 

 

 

Readalong Post #2: The Writing of Pearl Verses the World

Welcome to Day 2 of my readalong. Thanks to everyone who has dropped in on my first post, and left comments here or on social media. As I continue to reflect on Pearl Verses the World, today I thought I might chat a bit about how (and why!) I wrote the book and why I chose to write a verse novel. However, this post comes with a spoiler alert: if you haven’t read the book, and plan to read it, you might want to stop reading now and come back to this post after you have.

I must admit that I didn’t so much choose the verse novel form as it chose me.  Long before I met Pearl, I started a review site called Aussiereviews, and started reviewing Australian books. In 2002 I opened a novel from my review pile – and was surprised to see it was written in verse. I had never heard the term verse novel, let alone seen one, but as I started to read that book (Margaret Wild’s Jinx), I fell in love with the form. I knew that I would like to write like that and, as I started to find and read other verse novels, I knew that one day I would try to write one of my own. But I thought that first I would learn HOW to write a verse novel – a book, or a course, or something to guide me through the process. That didn’t happen.

Instead,  Pearl Verses the World came like a bolt from the blue, insisting it be written, and be written in verse. One night as I got into into bed, a few lines of poetry came into my head, and I had to get up, find a piece of paper, and write them down. Each time I tried to turn the light off and get some rest, a few more lines came to me, and I had to jump out of bed and write them down.  I still own that piece of paper and those early lines.

Finally, my beloved started to get restless with all the late-night poetry making, and I had to give it a rest. That poem, though, didn’t let me rest, and over the coming days I drafted more poems – until I realised that there was a story being told and that the voice, who was Pearl, was not going to leave me be until I wrote her tale.

Pearl’s story was easy to write in many ways. It was almost as if Pearl was channeling through me – she told me her tale, and whenever I felt that I didn’t know what was going to happen next, I stopped writing and waited for it to come to me. And come to me it did; often when I was in the shower, or lying in bed, or doing something totally removed from writing. I gradually worked out why Pearl was sad, and why she felt lonely. She was watching her beloved grandmother fade away, and her grief had forced her apart from her classmates.

Having said that, Pearl’s story was in other ways terribly hard to write. When I wrote the scenes dealing with Granny’s death I experienced grief. A grief so real that I had to stop writing, curl into a ball and howl. Even long into the editing process I still cried. I also had to consider whether the book was too sad for child readers. Did I want children to cry as I had cried? The eventual answer was yes, I did need to share this story with children. They may cry when they read it – but hopefully they will also smile and even, perhaps, laugh out loud. Above all, I hope they will see that although they may experience loss or grief in their lives, life does go on and there is always hope. I also hope they will know it is okay to grieve, in their own way and in their own time. I have blogged before about sad books and why I write them here and here.

The other thing that happened when I wrote was that although I cried, I also smiled, And laughed. And, when I’d finished writing, I realised I was done crying. It was quite a cathartic process – one that I hope is echoed for readers, who, once they finish the book, should also be done crying.

Back to the writing process. I said earlier that I thought I would learn to write verse novels before I tried to write one. Instead, I kind of just winged it. I just wrote the story, in verse, as it came to me. But, looking back, those other verse novels I’d read, and my many years of writing poetry, stood me in good stead. It’s advice I give to anyone who asks me about being a writer: writers need to read. A lot. That reading builds an understanding of how story, and different writing forms, work, in ways that writing courses can’t on their own (of course writing courses, books on writing and so on are amazing too!).

So I wrote a verse novel, not really knowing what I was doing – and it worked. Amazingly, a year later, Pearl Verses the World was published by Walker Books, with amazing illustrations by Heather Potter, and the rest, as they say, is history.

DO you have questions? I’d love to answer them. Comment below. Or post them on my social media – Twitter, Facebook or Instagram (#pearlvworld or #readwithsally) , and I’ll answer them there. Thanks again for being part of my Readalong.

 

 

Poetry Friday: My Readalong Begins

It’s Poetry Friday, which is always exciting, but today I am especially excited because today also marks the beginning of my Readalong. Welcome! I am so glad you dropped by.

What’s a Readalong, I hear you ask? A readalong is where you are invited to read a book (or, in this case books) along with others doing the same.  My readalong is running for four weeks, and each week I will be inviting you to read one of my verse novels. But don’t worry if you don’t have a copy of your own – you  can dip your reading toes in to the extracts I’ll be sharing, and get a taste.  If you DO have a copy, I would love you to grab it off your shelf, read, or reread, and participate by asking questions, posting comments, or sharing your reactions on social media using the hashtag #readwithsally, or the individual hashtags for each of the four books. This post here gives more details and, as you’ll see, the purpose of all this is to spread some verse novel love AND celebrate the release of my brand new verse novel, Worse Things, on May 1.

So,  to start at the beginning, this first week, I’d love it if you would read along with my first verse novel, Pearl Verses the World, which was released waaaay back in 2009.  Here is the cover, which still takes my breath away:

Heather Potter, the illustrator, rendered Pearl, and her world, so beautifully, and the team from Walker Books crafted the most amazing cover design.

If you haven’t yet read the book, here is the booktrailer that I made way back then (incidentally, this was my first ever attempt at a trailer).

And,  if you’d like to hear an extract, here I am reading the opening pages:

Lastly, because it’s Poetry Friday, here’s one of the poems:

If you already have a copy of Pearl Verses the World, I would love if you would pick it up this week and revisit it. If you don’t own a copy, it is available in three editions:

The Australian version, published by Walker Books.

The US version, published by Candlewick Books

And the UK version (with a shorter title, just Pearl), published by Walker UK.

(Note that while these links do go to online bookstores, our brick and mortar stores are really struggling at the moment, so if you are going to buy a book, and have access to a local bookstore (lots are delivering!), I urge you to shop there.)

In the next few days I am going to post more about Pearl Verses the World – why and how I wrote it, some of the lovely moments that have come from interacting with readers, and more.  You can join in: if you have a copy of the book,  or a memory to share, I’d love to see a post on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook (#pearlvworld), or a comment here or on my Facebook page.

Thanks for reading this far and for joining in in whatever small way you can. And don’t forget there is, as very Friday, lots of other poetry goodness happening all over the web. You can see the Poetry Friday roundup at The Poetry Farm, hosted by Amy.

Poetry Friday: Beach Walks and Happy Toes

It’s Poetry Friday and today I am counting my blessings.  In these topsy-turvy troubling times, I am feeling lucky that I have a job that allows me to work from home. I am feeling lucky that I have a family who I love and  that all of us have roofs over our heads, even when we might be separated.  I feel lucky to have a house full of books, good internet connection, food in the fridge and pantry,  and so much more. And I feel very very lucky to live where I do, and that this means my daily exercise is on (to me) the most beautiful beach in the world.

Like so many other people I am staying home unless essential, but  because I live so close to the beach and because it is never crowded, I am still able to walk on the beach every morning, keeping well more than the required distance from other people (do be assured that this is done within the law, and in fact I am more cautious about any contact with people or surfaces than has been mandated).

Aware that there are so many people who can’t do this, I have been sharing a one minute video of the beach every day, on my Instagram account, using the hashtag #oneminute  . I’ve also started adding a selection to Youtube , for anyone who doesn’t have Instagram.  The idea is that anyone who needs a minute of waves, water, sunshine, sand, can watch, and breathe with me.

So, for example, you can watch the sunset over the Indian Ocean, and imagine you are there with me – or, if you’d prefer, alone:

I’ve been looking for different angles and, one day, I thought I would try filming my toes. In my head it was a little more artistic than it turned out, but I was able to giggle at myself:

It was only later, after I’d uploaded and shared that I remembered I had done something similar in a less stressful time a few years ago – in fact, back in 2016, when I photographed my toes and wrote an accompanying poem. I had happy toes then, and, when I’m on that beach, I have happy toes now. Here’s that video and poem – I hope your toes can soak up some of that happy today.

 

Happy Toes

This morning I have happy toes

They’re wriggling in the sand

They’ve carried me here ocean-side

To where the sea meets land

 

This morning I have happy toes

They’re dancing on the beach

They’re gathering secrets from below

And whispering each to each

 

This morning I have happy toes

They’re tingling in the waves

They’re laughing at the silly way

The morning sea behaves

 

This morning I have happy toes

They’ll head home feeling great

But tomorrow they’ll be back here

For another beach play date!

 

Copyright Sally Murphy 2016

 

The Poetry Friday Roundup today is at My Juicy Universe, where Heidi is inviting us to all #ShelterInPoems . Catching up on loads of poetry goodness seems a wonderful way to spend a Friday, so check it out.  Stay safe, breathe deep.

PS

It seems an age since I decided to have a Read Along (see this post) to celebrate the upcoming release of Worse Things.  When I scheduled it, I  did not imagine the lockdowns that would be happening around the world. The Read Along is still happening, though – I think we need books more than ever – and I hope you’ll join me, starting next Friday, to read with me.

Read Along With Me – Coming Soon!

Have you ever been super excited about something? Counting down the days or the sleeps until a birthday, or Christmas, or a special holiday?    If you have then you’ll understand what I’m feeling at the moment, as I count down the days (and the sleeps) until my new book Worse Things comes out on  May 1.

Let’s pause for a moment and gaze admiringly at the amazing cover, created by illustrator Sarah Davis and the amazing team at Walker Books Australia.

Worse Things is my fourth verse novel, and so as I thought about fun ways to prepare for, and celebrate, its release, I wondered if I could also somehow celebrate the first three. See, it’s been 11 years since the first one,  Pearl Verses the World was released, 10 years since Toppling and six years since Roses are Blue. So you might not have even been alive when the first one was published and, if you were and you have read it, it might have been quite some time ago.

So, here’s my plan. In the weeks leading up to Worse Things’ release, I’m going to have a read-along of the other three – one each week. What’s a read-along I hear you ask? It’s when lots of people (well, I’m crossing my fingers there’ll be lots) read the same book at the same time and talk about it.

How will we talk about it? I’ll be posting each day here on my blog, and answering questions here; I’ll also be running a Facebook live each week on my author page and again  you can drop in and ask questions – live. But that’s driven by me. I’m also asking you to talk about the book – through chatting on my social media or, in any other way, including your own Instagram, other social media, or blog. I’ll share more ideas in the lead up.

So, how can you get involved?

Grab a copy of one or more of the books. You might already own a copy, and, if you’re in Australia, there’s a good chance your school library of local library will have a copy. If you’d like to buy copies, pop into your local bookshop, or they are available online. American readers, if you’d prefer there are US editions of  Pearl Verses the World and Toppling, and UK readers, although the titles are different, Pearl and John and Dom are the same books inside.
Follow my page on Facebook. This is not my personal page where I post what I had for breakfast, but my author page where I share stuff about my books, my writing, and other reading related stuff. You can also follow me on Instagram or on Twitter.
If you are a teacher with a class who reads one of my books during this time, I have a few slots available for Skype sessions and, in Perth, a few slots for class visits, to chat directly about one of the books. Contact me to discuss.
If you have a blog or podcast and would like to chat about one of the books, or run some other cool related thing, again, let me know.
Get ready to hashtag. The hashtag for the whole event will be #readwithsally. To talk about one specific book, you can also use these: Pearl Verses the World #pearlvworld,  Toppling #toppling , Roses are Blue #blueroses and  Worse Things #worsethings.
If all of this is too much, I’d love if you’d just cheer me (and my books) on from the sidelines, even if quietly. Launching a new book is exciting but it’s also a tiny bit terrifying, so every little bit of goodwill helps!

Thanks for reading this far and thanks in advance for celebrating with me and whatever way you can. Drop back soon to see what else I have planned. In the meantime, I’d love you to comment and tell me about a time when you were counting down the days till something exciting.

Poetry Friday: Everywhere Stairs

It’s Poetry Friday, and I’ve been thinking about stairs. Why? Because I seem to keep stopping at the bottom of them of late. My recent treks have seen me pondering (and climbing) these stairs

on Rottnest Island, a place less known for its stairs than for its gorgeous beaches and, of course, quokkas. But the stairs form part of its military history and thus I climbed them as part of a tour.

Closer to home, I often climb these stairs

when I leave my beach – and often pause to snap them, even though I know it isn’t the first time, and won’t be the last. They are my favourite stairs because of their location, but I must confess to preferring going down than going up.

I also, recently, came across these stairs on my morning walk closer near the Swan River in Perth. From the bottom I called them rainbow stairs, but wondered whether someone had just spilt pain down them.

From the top, however,  I could see some deliberateness, including the yellow heart at the bottom.

Lastly, at my dayjob I work on the fourth floor, and must confess that I take the lift far too often, but this week have challenged myself to climb the stairs at least once per day. It’s hard work, but I’m hoping it will get easier. Maybe when I love the stairs more there will be a photo, but for now, you’ll just have to take my word.

So, with all these stairs featuring in my thoughts, it seemed logical to attempt a poem about them. Here it is.

Everywhere Stairs

Stairs

They’re everywhere

Beckoning me up

Calling me down

Obstacle

Challenge

Or invitation

Depending on mood

Or location.

I do like stairs

But sometimes

When I’m halfway up

I wish I’d stayed down

Or just taken the lift.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy, 2020)

 

Rebecca at Sloth Reads is hosting this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. So step over there, or step right up, and check out what other poetry goodness there is to see this week.

Poetry Friday: A Poetic Week

It’s Poetry Friday but I feel, for me, it’s been poetry week: which is a wonderful thing indeed.

On Monday night I  spent a lovely couple of hours in Fremantle at Voicebox, a monthly open mic poetry night.  I’ve been hearing about Voicebox for years and planning to get along, especially since I started working back in the city, but this was my first time actually getting there. Very glad I did. There were two guest poets who read from their works:  Rajan Sharma, in Australia from the UK to perform at the Fringe festival, and Caitlin Maling,   a West Aussie poet who I already very much admired, but who is always a pleasure to hear from.    There were also 10 awesome volunteers for the open mic spots, so over the course of the night, we were treated to an incredible range of poets and poetic forms, and topics., as well as opportunities  to just chat poetry, and life, with fellow attendees.

Listening to poets who are writing for adults, and chatting poetry was an excellent precursor to the event I spoke at on Wednesday night. My awesome poet friend Rebecca Newman had asked  me to be  part of an event at the amazing  Paperbird Books, talking all things children’s poetry and reading from our work.  The event on Monday night had taken my thoughts back to an a question I keep coming back to: what makes a poem ‘for children’ or ‘for adults’? I spent far too much time during my doctoral studies trying to nail down an answer, so I went back again this week to revisit what I ended up writing.

The conclusion I made then, as now, is that while the question can’t be easily answered, a poem is for children either because an adult (poet, publisher, teacher) decides it is, based on their concept of childhood OR it is for children if children engage with it. I like the latter idea better, because it gives the child agency. For myself, when I write poetry I try not to talk TO children , nor even OF children, but AS a child, because that is who I really am. After all, adults and children are one and the same – we are on a continuum.  My favourite quote in trying to figure all this out is from Ted Hughes, who labelled writing children’s poetry “a curious occupation…the most curious thing being that we think children need a special kind of poetry”.

SO, Rebecca and I headed to Paperbird on Wednesday night, with a very enthusiastic, friendly audience, who listened to us talk about this curious occupation, and the experiences we have had both crafting poetry, and sharing it with children. We talked about the importance of letting children enjoy poetry – both the reading and the writing, and I suspect I used the word ‘pleasure’ at least a hundred times: pleasure is key when it comes to experiencing poetry.  What else did we talk about? The importance   of poetry in tough times, the joy of humorous poetry, rhyme, not rhyme… so much! Rebecca recorded our conversation, so we are hoping there might be some snippets to share at some point.

In the meantime,  as we discussed our work, we touched on Poetry Tag, the blog we used to run (I guess we still own it – we just kind of faded out of posting). The idea was that we took turns setting the other a handful of words which then had to be incorporated into a poem.  I went looking today for one of those poems, which I mentioned during Wednesday night’s chat. I remembered it as a really angry poem. When I  found it today I realised it probably wasn’t angry enough, because there are still refugee children being mistreated, just as they were in 2014 when I wrote this poem. Anyway, here is, along with the words Rebecca gave me back then:

SONG

I sing    

of a courageous tree

which struggles on

beside the sea

in spite of wind

and waves

and sand

perched

betwixt ocean and land.

 

I sing

of snail

that battles on

though winter’s rains

are so long gone

and shelters

waiting

in fragile shell.

How long

till rain

he cannot tell.

 

I sing

of you

embattled child

whose land

and life

have been defiled.

Who seeks new home

new hope

new place

Yet languish now

in no-man-s place.

 

I sing

to tell the world you’re there.

I sing

to let you know I care.

And like that tree

and like that snail

I sing in hopes

you will prevail.

 

I sing for you

young refugee

in hopes one day

you will be free.

(Copyright Sally Murphy 2014; 2020)

My conclusions from my week of poetry? We need angry poems. We need to write them and share them and act on them. We also need beautiful poems, hope-filled poems, sad poems, joyful poems, funny poems.   Thanks Voicebox, Paper Bird and Rebecca for making this a poetry week for me and others. And thanks to the Poetry Friday community for letting me be part of spreading poetry and its many messages.

Speaking of Poetry Friday – head over to the roundup hosted this  week by my fellow Aussie poet, Kat Apel,  who is    also, coincidentally, sharing a poem she wrote in 2014.

Hope your week is filled with poetry too!

Poetry Friday: Graffiti?

It’s Friday, which means it’s Poetry Friday and, once this post is written, I will have managed to post every week this year! Of course I do realise it’s only week 3, but still a good sign that I’m going to do better this year).

First up, thanks to everyone who visited last week, when I hosted the weekly round up, and for all the lovely comments and messages of support for Australia. Like many Australians, I am blown away by the generosity coming from around the world –  not just in the form of donations, but also messages of solidarity and hope as well as so many statements urging leaders to wake up and take more drastic action to prevent climate change and start saving our planet.

Onto the poetry. This week I set the goal to write something – anything – every day, preferably before heading out the door to my dayjob. And I managed to write something everyday.  More pleasing, most of it was poetry, including progress on a verse novel I started before Christmas. Early days, but it’s just lovely to be creating.

On Monday, on my early morning walk, I spotted some words carved into the footpath – obviously done while the concrete was still wet. I snapped a photo and walked home pondering what would lead to someone carving those words there. More often you see initials, or paw prints or – and I love spotting these – the prints of leaves that have fallen onto the setting concrete.  I was so taken by these words that I didn’t even notice some spelling quirks (which is most unlike this teacher!).

So, when I sat down after breakfast to write,  it didn’t surprise me that my thoughts went back to that footpath. I wanted to explore not the meaning of the words, but the intention of the scribe.  Here’s what I came up with:

The poem reads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Scribe

Wet concrete

Opportunity knocks

Chance to make my mark.

A footprint?

Too sticky.

A tag?

Don’t have one.

My name?

Asking for trouble.

Something to make people wonder?

I pause.

I breathe.

Grab a stick

And write.

(Copyright Sally Murphy, 2020)

It was only later that I remembered I had written on a similar topic before and went searching for those poems, first drafted on a visit to Rottnest Island (off the WA coast and home to the world-famous quokkas). I was there on a retreat with SCBWI pals, and on a sketch and scribble we stopped under this tree, which, from memory, may have been a young Moreton Bay Fig. I was drawn to the many names carved into the trunk and initially a bit cross that people would do this to a tree. That’s where this poem came from:

The poem reads:

The Name Tree

You are a thing of beauty

stretching grey-brown limbs skywards.

A testament to your will

to stand

against stiff sea-breezes

and salty spray.

But I don’t get why your trunk

must be scarred

by careless humans

wanting to leave a sign

that they were once here:

Ron + Therese

Sue

Hadly, Tony and

KC

all were here.

But now they’re not

and all that’s left of them

is their marks

scratched into your bark.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

After I’d written that I had a little longer to sit and think. At the time I was working on a collection of poetry with paired poems, each pair looking at the same topic from differing perspectives. So I started to wonder what the other perspective was here. And I started to think about why we have this urge to  leave our mark. Tony’s name was the most prominent, and I started to think of him as a small boy wanting to make a big mark, in the hope those who read it would imagine him as perhaps bigger, more accomplished than he saw himself. This was the result:

 

The poem reads:

The Tony Tree

I’m nobody

from nowhere special

no chance

that anyone will remember me

for anything in particular.

But perhaps

if I carve my name

in this trunk

then in years to come

someone will read it

and know I was here.

They will wonder

who Tony was

and where he was from

and what he was good at

and maybe

they’ll remember

the me I could have been.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

 

On another walk on Rottnest, this time alone, I came across some rocks on the shore where, again, people had been carving their names. I sat on one of these rocks and just breathed in the amazing view, but I couldn’t help but again wonder about the need to leave a mark. I had no urge, but my younger self probably would have, and I wondered what could justify needing to carve like that. What would someone crave that would really speak to future visitors? This is what I wrote:

The poem reads:

Grafitti

Why carve your name

on a rock

on an isolated beach,

leaving nature scarred for all days?

Will anyone,

stopping to view the scene,

care that

Tammy woz here

or that Max

found a stick

just right to gouge his name?

Will they want

to know who Lizzy was

and, if they do,

will they ever

learn the truth?

But, still,

I have the urge to carve

and so I do,

leaving my words for all to see:

Contemplate, while you can.

(Poem copyright Sally Murphy)

I imagined some philosopher, wanting people to use those rocks to seize a few moments for quiet contemplation, but can also see now that that ‘while you can’ could also be a bit of a warning – ie contemplate this natural beauty while it’s still here.  And it’s only while I write this post that I wonder if my imagined philosopher was also the person who, years later, left those words in the path for me to see?

So I am poeming  once more – with new poems and reconnecting with older ones. – and this is good. Just in time, too, because this week I am having an ‘In Conversation’ with my amazing poet friend Rebecca Newman at Paperbird Bookshop in Fremantle. If you are nearby, drop by to hear us chat all things children’s poetry (or as much as we can fit into one session!). It’s a free event, to celebrate the end of Rebecca’s residency at Paperbird. You can book here.  And, if you are across the country or across the world, I’ll share some highlights next Poetry Friday.

Phew. What a long post. I’m sure you are itching to see what other poetry goodness has popped up around the blogosphere today. the roundup is over at Reading  to the Core, thanks to Catherine who is hosting this week.

Poetry Friday: The Roundup is Here!

It’s Poetry Friday and not only is it time for me to share some poetry goodness, but I’m also hosting the Roundup today which means, at the end of this post you will find the links to all the poetry goodness offered by the rest of the PF community.

But before you rush off to tour the world wide web,  my own roundup of what I’ve been up to of late.

One of the small things I’m doing in my response to the horrible bushfire catastrophe still happening here in Australia, is to be part of the amazing #authorsforfireys auction happening on Twitter. There are so many amazing items being auctioned, with all proceeds going directly to the fire agencies and wildlife relief.  My small offering is an one-hour school visit – in person if in West Australia, or, via skype anywhere else in the world. The hour can be for a school, writers group etc, or even one on one for a consultation.  You can bid on this item or any of the other items by heading to Twitter until 11pm (AEST) tomorrow. Just search the hashtag #authorsforfireys. And, if you want to understand how the auction works there is a webpage to explain here.

I’ve also been lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the last few weeks rereading some of my favourite verse novels. Along with staff from the National Centre of Australian Children’s Literature  and my talented friend Kathryn Apel    (who, incidentally, is also part of the #authorsforfireys auction) are compiling a bibliography of Australian verse novels for children and young adults.  We have managed to identify over fifty such books and been busily reading and annotating to create a resource for teachers, librarians, children’s literature lovers and, ultimately, to help get quality verse novels into the hands of young readers.

As a result, I have managed to reread the very  first verse novel I ever read – before I even knew of the term ‘verse novel’, It was Margaret Wild’s YA novel, Jinx . I am forever grateful that I discovered this novel and the form, starting a love affair which will last for the rest of my life. The bibliography will be available later this year, and we look forward to sharing it far and wide.

And, speaking of verse novels, I have also been busy planning how best to share my own new verse novel,  Worse Things, coming in May, with the world. So, as a tiny starting point, it’s time I reveal the cover of this new book baby here for the world to see. So, drumroll please – here its:

 

I am really delighted with what the amazing Sarah Davis has come up with for the cover – really different than my earlier verse novels, which is good, because so is what’s in between the covers. I really can’t wait to share more about this book, including some poetry, as the year goes by.

And some poetry for my post? I must confess that the poetry still isn’t flowing from my fingers, so I went digging through my files for something to recycle, and found this from a beach walk. i thought it apt because, even when poetry doesn’t flow, a walk in nature, especially on my beach, is always balm.

 

Thanks for dropping by, and now over to my Poetry Friday friends to let us know what they’ve been doing:

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