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: