Rupert Loydell & Tim Salter

Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer at University College Falmouth, the editor of Stride magazine and several anthologies, and the author of many books of poetry. Previous poems have been commissioned by the Bath Literature Festival, Devon Arts In Schools Initiative (DAISI) and Exeter Health Care Arts. He has tutored for the Arvon Foundation, run writing workshops at Tate St Ives, written for the Open University's ‘Start Writing Poetry’ course, been an Arts Council Fellow in Poetry at the University of Warwick, and a Royal Literary Fund Project Fellow in Exeter schools. He has read his work on local and national radio and at literary festivals and events around the UK, including Dartington's Ways With Words Festival, The Soho Jazz Festival, Barrow's Word Of Mouth Festival, The St. Ives Festival, Avon Poetry Festival, North Devon Children's Book Festival, Sidmouth Arts Festival; and at The Poetry Society and the new British Library.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844717941
ISBN:  9781844717941
Author:  Rupert Loydell
Title:  The Fantasy Kid
Series:  Children's Poetry Library
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  YCET2
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Sep-10
Extent:  80pp
Height:  178 mm
Width:  110 mm
Thickness:  7 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 6.99
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  The Fantasy Kid collects together Rupert Loydell's poems for children, teenagers and the young-at-heart. Whether making excuses at school, pondering questions about the nature of chocolate, serenading slugs, saying good bye to a starfish or introducing us to Doctor Fizz and Alvin the Aardvark, these poems are witty, irreverent, memorable and odd. Look out! The Fantasy Kid is coming to your town, and your world will never be the same again.

Main description:  The Fantasy Kid collects together Rupert Loydell's poems for children, teenagers and the young-at-heart, all of which have been test-driven by the author at schools, festivals, libraries and readings around the country. Whether making excuses at school, pondering questions about the nature of chocolate, serenading slugs, saying good bye to a starfish, introducing us to Doctor Fizz and Alvin the Aardvark, or remembering holidays with distant relatives, these poems are witty, irreverent, memorable and odd — although this book has a serious side too … Look out! The Fantasy Kid is coming to your town, and your world will never be the same again.

Table of contents:
Contents
Acknowledgements
The TV Went Away Today
Poem to Order
We Don’t Do That One Anymore
A Nice School
The Teachers
a (o)
Wilberforce Grommett-Smith
The Fantasy Kid
If You Were Made Of Chocolate
Excuses
Morning Poem
Full
Sea
Dusk
Sunset
Days of Rain
River, in Flood
Snow
Frost
Tonight
Winter Triptych
Spider
Happy Hippy Poem
Timeless
Spiral Weld
Doctor Fizz
Alpine Zoo, Innsbruck
Found Animal Rights Poem
Teflon Finial And Alvin The Aardvark
Slugs
Poetic Blues
A Few Moments of Freedom
M6 Motorbike
Back Seat Driver
This Train
Truant & Fly
I Surfed Home On The Motorway
Who’s A Lucky Boy Then?
A Right Charlie
No One Made MashLike My Grandad!
Distant Relations
Glorious
Norfolk Broads
Keeping the Same Tension
Me and the Missus
The Pedlar of Winds
Tree Stump
November the Fifth Love Poem
Firework Finale
Missing Persons
Nobody
Clown
My Pebble
River
Poem For A Girl Putting A Starfish Back Into The Sea
Lullaby

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample ( KB)

Excerpt from book:  

The Fantasy Kid

The Fantasy Kid chewed language like gum
and stuck it all over the woodwork
where it turned hard, and people
picked at it with broken fingernails.

The Fantasy Kid worked words like clay:
great blobs and unfired sculptures
that changed in time to vases, pots and jugs
after you’d learnt to live with them.

The Fantasy Kid might never have existed
but he walked into the light one day
and smiled at a handwritten friend
across a room of solid colours.

The Fantasy Kid laughed at the headlines.
Cut them up to make meaning, cut them down
to tell the truth. Stuck them all over
envelopes that flew out of his hand.

The Fantasy Kid woke up one morning
to see the summer disappearing over the horizon.
The storm that followed swallowed him
and he was gone like a biro suddenly empty.


The Fantasy Kid left town. He’s gone.
The mailbox is empty, the alphabet dust.
A bookshelf full of unwritten books
stands awaiting his return.

The Fantasy Kid is coming to your town.
Lock up your cider, put away your pens.
He’ll teach your daughters to laugh,
your sons to read. Steal your voice.

Unpublished endorsement:  Rupert Loydell's writing for young people is full of fun, and intelligence, and above all possibility: the possibilities of what language can do, of what poetry is for, of what words can achieve. There's compassion here, and empathy and, dare I say it, love.

Ian McMillan

Unpublished endorsement:  Like The Fantasy Kid himself, Rupert Loydell chews language like gum, playing with the taste and feel of words as he rolls them round his tongue. Enjoy the taste and savour the flavours.

Paul Cookson