“Who’s Next?” by Jeanie Axton

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The Future             

A callout for an incredible opportunity for the “right writer”.

Are you a children’s poet with a passion for sharing poetry and promoting Australian children’s poets and their work?

An enthusiastic volunteer is needed to take over the administration of this popular blog in the next six months starting before January 2023.

After working on Australian Children’s Poetry for five years, I feel the time has come to step aside and hand over to someone new. Next year I will be at times travelling with my husband who has retired.

What will you gain from being the administrator?

You will get to meet, mainly in a digital form, a lot of great writers and learn from them.

You get to read all sorts of children’s poetry and grow as a writer as you read.

You will learn how to determine what’s suitable for children and what is not and make decisions on that.

You get to create prompts which encourage writers to use their creativity to write and send in poems to you.

You will be contributing to the showcasing and promotion of Australian Children’s Poetry in our country.

If you are a writer who publishes books this position would enhance your career.

Here is a link to the site

https://australianchildrenspoetry.com.au/blog/

Basically, what does the administrator’s role involve?

  1. Receiving poems by email and posting the Poem of the Day to the blog. Currently we run the poems on fortnightly prompts with poems posted each weekday during a school year. The site uses WordPress and after a bit of practice its straightforward.
  2. Approving (or trashing spam) comments
  3. Updating the A-Z of Australian children’s poets as required. Instructions are given for this.
  4. Sharing information about competitions and articles about Australian children’s poetry.
  5. Secure Funding for incidental expenses associated with the site. For example, the Domain name through GoDaddy and WordPress Fee. Administrators have either paid these in the past or secured a little funding. I would think there are grants that can be accessed in Australia to help with these.
  6. Networking with poets and taking the website in the direction you think it should go next.

How to apply:

Please send in one A4  page addressing the following

  1. Introduce yourself
  2. Tell me about your writing journey with poetry.
  3. Briefly outline why you would like to take on this role?

Please email to poemoftheday.jaxton@gmail.com

Thankyou

Jeanie

“The Frogs’ Protest” by Monty Edwards

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“Frogs unite. It isn’t fair!

Come together everywhere!

Leave your puddles, ponds and pools:

Join the students in their schools!

Send their ears your loudest croak,

So they’ll learn it’s not a joke:

Giving a whole Year to Dogs!

What about we jolly frogs?!”

“Nobody sees the same things” by James Aitchison

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A boy sees a dead meat pie,
And underpants flying in the sky.
A football squashed by an ox,
And a pair of stinky sox.

A girl sees a soft sunrise,
And dappled light before her eyes.
Sparkling dewfall overnight,
And boys — girls are always right.

“Crown Jewels” by Stefan Nicholson

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I see a mouse, an elephant and three people playing cards,
if you turn it around, to shake those coloured shards.
And with light at one end, diluting the edge,
it seeps through to the middle, like spilling down from a ledge.

Then if you put your nose nearly touching the middle,
it looks back at you with a grin, like a colourful riddle.
Sharp fragments spilled over squares and even shadows seen.
Why, it’s the shiny jewels from a crown …
belonging to a Queen.

Poem in response to “Kaleidoscope” Prompt

“Compound eye-view”  by Celia Berrell

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Wanting to be
a fly on a wall
in order to see
what will befall,
might not work;
might be unwise,
since flies have all got
compound eyes.

They’re quick to see
if anything moves;
three-sixty degrees
in all their views,
but images make
a mosaic design
where nothing seems
to stay in line.

And since they fail
the focus test,
whatever they see 
is fuzzy at best!

Inspired by Kaleidoscope prompt and image of a HOUSEFLY COMPOUND EYE from the nikonsmallworld photograpy competition