“The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”
These words are Alan Bennett’s. The story that follows is my own. It’s about how the hand that came out and took mine when I most needed it came in a way I would never have suspected, through poetry…
You can read the rest of the story on my guest blog for the Children’s Poetry Summit, which I wrote in anticipation of my new poetry collection for young people, You Are Not Alone, due out January 2023.
The Children’s Poetry Summit is a UK network of individuals and organisations actively interested in poetry for children. It provides a regular forum for discussion, information exchange, sharing of ideas and good practice, and a pressure group which campaigns for children’s poetry. Members are children’s poets, publishers, teachers, librarians, booksellers, organisations and anyone else interested in children’s poetry.
Shauna Darling Robertson 