We Are Family by Oliver Sykes, CLiPPA Shortlisted Poet

The CLiPPA Shortlist was recently announced and we are thrilled to welcome one of the shortlisted poets to the blog to share information about his experience with poetry!

 

Poetry has been part of my life since I was very young. Shortly after our mum left, when I was eight, our dad became our primary carer. He was very passionate about education as a means of bettering oneself, and he took it upon himself to read with me and my siblings each night. As well as introducing me to classics such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, he also introduced me to William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. He would sometimes recite ‘Tyger, Tyger’ from memory, and in his bedroom, I remember there was a framed poetry print of ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling, which he looked to for strength in difficult times.

There’s no doubt in my mind that having a dad who was openly fond of poetry, helped pave the way for my own love of poetry. At school, I loved English and Drama. I vividly remember studying John Agaard’s Half Caste in English, and I remember being chosen to read John McCrae’s In Flander’s Fields in assembly one year for Remembrance Day. I later went on to study English Literature at A-level, where I studied Carol Ann Duffy and many of the War Poets and the Romantics, and after finishing my degree in Theatre Studies, I worked with many performance poets as a Producer, so poetry always seems to have been present in my life in some way or another.

As a child, I wrote countless poems and short stories, sketched characters and performed plays for anyone I could convince to watch me. This creative streak (and need for attention) has been present throughout my life. I guess it’s part of being one of six kids, always competing to be listened to.

As for the collection, however, I started writing these poems in earnest in 2020 during lockdown. For me, the early part of lockdown was a time of quiet and reflection. Each evening, I found myself with time and space to be creative, and I wrote 20 or so poems before realising that there was potential for these poems to tell the story of my childhood.

Once I’d realised that, putting the book together was a very organic process. Looking at the poems I’d written, it occurred to me that I was using my writing to re-examine and reclaim some of the more difficult parts of my childhood. After making this realisation, I stuck with the theme until I reached about 50 poems. At that point, I started to think of the poems as a collection for children, and though We Are Family tells a deeply personal story of my own childhood, after this realisation, the collection became less and less about me and more and more about the parallels between my difficult childhood and the hardship that other children and families are experiencing today whether with the cost of living crisis, or grief and abandonment, and the need to come together as a family to support one another when one parent leaves.

Coming from a working class background, I’m very aware of how underrepresented working class voices, people and culture are in children’s literature, and so, from the very beginning of my journey as a children’s author and poet, I decided that I would make it my mission to help children, young people and families from disadvantaged backgrounds to feel seen in my writing. Having children and families respond to my work in a positive way make me swell with pride and is definitely the most satisfying thing about it.

I’m lucky to get direct feedback from live audiences watching my one-man stage adaptation of the book and, whether I’m in a school or a library or a theatre, the atmosphere is always electric. It’s raucous, like a music gig, with kids spontaneously clapping along to the rhythm of poems and eagerly awaiting opportunities to join in and shout out, with me playing the role of ringmaster, trying my best to contain their excitement. And there’s also slower, deeper moments of understanding in the show, moments where you could feel a pin drop, as children take in some of the more difficult themes. I’ve also had lots of parents, who have read the book with their child, send me their children’s book reviews and own self-penned poems, which is always an absolute delight.

To be shortlisted for the CLiPPA was overwhelming. I love writing and performing poetry, and telling stories, and for my debut children’s poetry collection to be recognised by the CLiPPA is incredibly special.

Here are my tips for a young person wanting to write poetry themselves: firstly, immerse yourself in poetry. Look at how other poets keep you hooked and make you care, then try to use these same techniques when writing your own poems. Watch live poetry, and have a go at performing your poems in front of a live audience. It will inform and strengthen your writing. If you decide to make a show or create a collection of poems, I would strongly advise including children and families in your creative process.

We Are Family by Oliver Sykes, illustrated by Ian Morris, is published by Otter-Barry Books, and is one of the five books on the shortlist for this year’s CLiPPA, CLPE Children’s Poetry Award. Find out more about the shortlist and how to take part in this year’s Shadowing scheme.