Teach Primary Issue 18.5

Stephen Lightbown discusses his CLiPPA-shortlisted debut poetry collection for children, And I Climbed and I Climbed TP. The lived experience of a wheelchair user resonates so authentically through your book, And I Climbed and I Climbed . Was it a challenging thing to do for you? SL . I’d bought some children’s books specifically because they featured disability – in particular wheelchair users – and they just didn’t feel true to me. There didn’t seem to be enough depth to the characters beyond the wheelchair that they were sat in; and the wheelchairs that they were sat in were quite fantastical. They were like sports car type, hybrid type things, all bells and whistles. And I thought that’s great, but it isn’t the reality. So I came up with this idea about an eight-year-old who has an accident and becomes a wheelchair user. Then I just started to write some poems based on that. Once I’d started, they just kept flowing and the book came together. TP. The voice of the character, Cosmo, is really strong and rings true, how much of his experience links with your own? SL. There are some similarities but he’s not me. I got into Cosmo’s character by writing pages and pages and pages about him to find out who he really was. What’s his favorite colour? What’s his favourite jumper? What are his favourite foods? Where does he go on holiday? How does he spend his spare time? Not all of that made it into the book, but I got such a strong sense of him as a character, and as a person. It helped me create a person that uses a wheelchair rather than someone who is defined by it. That was really important to me. I also watched videos from a charity called Whizz Kids, which provides wheelchairs to under sixteens, showing children talking about their experiences and what it meant to be a wheelchair user ( whizz-kidz.org.uk ) . TP. Are there any other children’s poets whose work has inspired you? SL. Children’s poetry wasn’t something I was picking up and reading regularly before writing this collection. But as I’m getting into it, there are some fantastic voices out there. I really enjoyed Coral Rumble’s books, the collections by Shauna Darling-Robertson and Matt Goodfellow’s collections and verse novel. Poets I had on my shelf before that were Roger McGough, Michael Rosen and John Hegley. The more I’m getting into it, the more I’m finding poetry that I find interesting. I’m wondering if my style will change because I’m reading more. I do find when I sit at my laptop and I’m struggling to think of how to get into a poem, I’ll often pick up collections and just read a couple of poems at random as a way of getting into a poem. TP. Have you got any tips for getting children into writing poetry? SL. Some of the poems in the collection are epistolary or letter poems. These are a great way into writing poetry. I was doing this in a workshop with children recently and within an hour the children and their parents, who all got involved too, had written 85 poems! We discussed letters and messages and thought about who or what they would choose to write to. They started having conversations and from this they found they were writing poems naturally. The children all used their imaginations, and the poems were really emotional. Writing poetry is important: you can use it to tap into your feelings, imagination and creativity. TP Full details on all five books on the CLiPPA 2024 shortlist are available at clpe.org.uk/ poetry/CLiPPA All the texts have accompanying video resources and lesson plans to bring poetry to life. POETRY IN MOTION: Writing an authentic wheelchair user Stephen Lightbown is a poet, spoken word artist, wheelchair user, yoga teacher and adaptive surfer from Bristol. www.teachwire.net | 67 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG stephenlightbown.com spokeandpencil