It appears that all the poetry pieces are falling into place. On Monday, poet Michael Rosen was awarded the Children’s Laureate and today Julia Johnson won the CLPE Poetry Award at  a ceremony at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education in Waterloo. Of course Michael Rosen was waiting with the rest of us to find out which of the wonderful shortlisted books would win this award.

Some fantastic poetry books, a mixture of collections and anthologies, were shortlisted, such as: I Don¹t Want an Avocado for an Uncle by Chrissie Gittins, The Thing That Mattered Most - Scottish Poems for Children edited by Julie Johnstone, My Hat and All That by Tony Mitton, Fairy Poems edited by Matilda Harrison, The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems edited and illustrated by Jackie Morris and finally, Don’t Wear It On Your Head, Don’t Stick It Down Your Pants by John Siddique.

To open the evening, Tony Mitton and children from a local school performed some engaging poetry from Tony’s book, My Hat and All That to get us all warmed up for the event. Margaret Meek Spencer introduced the award with a speech discussing the judging process ,since she had chaired the judging panel which was made up of Ian McMillan and Fiona Waters. Fiona Waters then shared her impressions of all the poetry books, stating very clearly that all the books were filled with beautifully written poetry and that all of them should be flooding our shelves, not just the winner!

The highlight of the event was when Ian McMillan colourfully announced the winner as Julia Johnstone’s book, The Thing That Mattered Most. This book is an enticing collection of poems written by contemporary Scottish poets. Lots of languages are represented, with poems written in English, Gaelic, Shetlandic, and Scots. Beside each of the poems is a mini biography of the poet ,which will be useful in an educational context The preface to this book is written by acclaimed author, Michael Morpurgo andte collection is beautifully illustrated in black and white. Julia, who is the Education Development Officer at the Scottish Poetry Library, spoke of the book as a project close to her heart since she and others in the field feel that there is really not enough celebration of Scottish poetry.

Congratulations to Julia Johnstone!

Report by Shireen Babul