Happy World Poetry Day! Coming soon... 'Things That Should Be in a Poem', a new collection by Coral Rumble
It’s World Poetry Day and we thought we’d celebrate by giving you a sneak preview of the next poetry book to be published by Troika. Drum roll please… here it comes…
Award-winning poet Coral Rumble already has two collections with Troika: Riding a Lion was shortlisted for the North Somerset Teachers’ Book Award 2021 and her verse novel Little Light was a National Poetry Day Selection 2021 and is included in Empathy Lab’s ‘Read for Empathy’ Collection 2022.
Things That Should Be in a Poem is a slight change of direction for Coral, as it’s designed to introduce poetry to the youngest readers, from 5 years.
Coral says, “I’ve loved working on this collection because I could be as random as I liked! Some people seem to think that only grand subjects are worthy of a poem but, often, poems about the most ordinary things are full of power and truth. Of course there are pure flights of fancy among the ordinary things, but flights of fancy are quite ordinary for me!”
Coral’s still working closely with editor Roy Johnson and illustrator Shih-Yu Lin to fine-tune and wrap-up the book. You’ll have to wait until September to see the finished thing (sorry about that!) but, to whet your appetite, here are a few draft pages-in-progress.
So, how is work-in-progress going? Coral says, “Ordering poems is always a challenge when bringing a collection together, even with an eclectic mix like this. However, the more you look at the poems, the more patterns begin to emerge and you realise that some poems were just made for each other and need to be shoulder to shoulder within the covers.”
Editor Roy Johnson adds, “With any illustrated poetry book, there’s also lots of to-ing and fro-ing to match the words and the images. It’s a delicate balance, as the images need to complement and support the poems without over-explaining them. A poem can say all kinds of different things to different people so it’s important to leave room for that.”
Here are a few snippets from some recent conversations between Roy, Coral and Shih-Yu!
“It’s been wonderful to work with Shih-Yu Lin. What an exciting new talent he is!” says Coral. “I hope our book will make young children laugh, feel, think and imagine life as we know it, and life as we’d like it to be.”
Find out more at www.troikabooks.com/things-that-should-be-in-a-poem