Fred Sedgwick

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Biographical note:  Fred Sedgwick was born in Ireland and brought up in London. He has been a freelance writer, teacher and lecturer since 1990. He is the author of hundreds of poems in anthologies for children, and over thirty books: about teaching writing, Shakespeare and the Young Writer (Routledge), etymology (Where Words Come From, Continuum) and Art Education. He is a father (to Daniel) and a grandfather (to Malachi).

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844712960
ISBN:  9781844712960
Author:  Fred Sedgwick
Title:  Here Comes the Poetry Man
Series:  Children's Poetry Library
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  YDP
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Feb-11
Extent:  80pp
Height:  178 mm
Width:  110 mm
Thickness:  6 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 6.99
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Being born; falling in love (though not, please not, with Jenny); dancing the locomotion; fighting on the playground; being a little frightened: all human life, as they used to say, is here. The book also contains an attempt on a world record – for the shortest poem ever written.

Main description:  Here Comes the Poetry Man shows a passion for playing with words: how many rhymes are there for the last part of Eloise’s name? How many names can you get into one poem? What are your favourite words? Can you write a poem about a beloved cat using a blues structure?
It is about the big issues of life – birth, remembering your mother singing, sadness, fear, loss, love: love, that is of friends, family, foreign places, poetry – and a good take-away curry (more lovely words here). It addresses these issues with good humour (in both senses of the phrase) especially in its glimpses of family and school life, from babyhood’s first hour, to Grandma and Grandad’s golden wedding bash.
It celebrates all kinds of human activity: moving house, being in a bad mood, falling in love (though not, please not, with Jenny), loneliness – and dancing the locomotion.
It shows that kind of delight in nature that is, perhaps, special to a city boy who began to notice relatively late, once he’d moved to Suffolk, the times when spring came, and how clouds’ shapes change, and the way a thaw transforms a landscape slowly but dramatically.
It ends with a celebration of three great artists: the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti, the twentieth century poet Charles Causley, and the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.
The poems in this book have all been road-tested many times in classrooms. The book will also appeal to individual children, and to adults too, especially if they have felt in the past that poetry ignores them.

Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
First thing today
Poem for Eloise
Auntie’s Boyfriend
Eloise Alone
My Grandparents’ Golden Wedding Party
Moving House
A Disgusting Poem
Favourite Words
What the Headteacher said …
Loving Gertie Best
Fall in love
Notice on a Classroom Door
Leave Charlie Alone
The Fight
Victoria’s Poem
Butterfly
Stanley’s Blues
My cat Stanley
My Cat Cleaning Himself
Meeting
Some Other Ark
Once there was a unicorn
Hunky-Dory Daly
Under
Snapshots
Three for Winter
Cinquain Prayer, February Night
Thaw
Elegy for Bonfire Night
Three for Spring
Blossoms
Snowdrops
Casting a Clout
East Anglia
The Oak Chest
The thunder to the lightning
In the house there are
Hate sonnet
Mr Khan’s Shop
Dance Poem
Poetry Man
‘Our God, heaven cannot hold him’
Lord of all gardens
(Kyrielle)
After Giacometti (1901-1966)
Requiem for a Cat

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Excerpt from book:  

Eloise Alone

In faded jeans
and anorak
I walk along
the railway track.
 
Disused for more than
twenty years,
it calms my thunder-
storm of tears.
 
The rails are going
who knows where
and I’d go too
but I don’t dare.
 
The voices raised
in disarray
are long ago
and far away.
 
Wild flowers wave
like tiny flags
and there’s a thrush
that drags and drags

a worm from deep
inside the grass.
The clouds are calm
and small, and cross
 
the sky beyond
the pylon there …
and I’d go too
but I don’t dare.
 
The argument
that drove me from
the living room
dies and is gone.
 
In faded jeans
and anorak
I walk along
the railway track.

Unpublished endorsement:  He is one of that honourable company of poets … who succeed in writing poetry for children and not condescending comic joke books.

John Cotton

Unpublished endorsement:  Fred Sedgwick's poems beguile and delight the reader. They are beautifully crafted, and exhibit a gentle loving humour … A bejewelled collection.

Angela Topping