BIG TEN YEARS!!!!!!

Its official!! I have now been doing this job - not really a job is it, going round reading poems out - for ten years now!! Ten whole years as a full time professional poetry bloke. I can't believe i have got away with it!!! I have never had a job before as long as thing, never done anything for ten years. It a long time innit? 3650 days. Thats 3650 breakfasts, dinners and teas that i have eaten as a professional poetry bloke. Anyway , i'm not one to linger on whats gone before - the exciting stuff is whats in front of you - but i have done a few stats about the last ten years and here they are......

1000 plus school visits
500 libraries
Over 5000 performances
Performed to 250, 000 people
7 books published
450 poems published
2500 autographs
543 school dinners
Been on the telly 5 times
Been on the radio 50 times
400,000 miles travelled - thats about 14 times around the Earth!!!
226 scotch eggs
546 packets of crisps

I have also worn out 5 pairs of shoes , six pairs of trouses and seven shirts!!

Blimy, it really has been a ride.

So far.......

That Poetry Bloke Goes Back to School

Have a look at my new video that I just made back in my old school at Bradshaw Primary School, Halifax, West Yorkshire.

That Poetry Bloke Rhymes On The Road 2012

Pie and Pea Supper

Lets have a pie and pea supper
a supper fit for a king
then after our pie and pea supper
i know a few songs we can sing

oh for a sing-a-long supper
think of the fun it will bring
we'll all be singing our hearts out
full of the joys of spring!

All Over The Place....

I seem to have been all over the place recently. I have been in schools in Blackpool,  Sheffield and up in the North East for the Northern Childrens Book Festival. I was in Walsend, Whitley Bay and Sunderland. I have got into takng snaps wiht my fancy new phone and trying to make little films of my trips. I'll have a go at doing one for the last trip. I like learning new things but these phones are like magic boxes and can do loads of stuff so there is a lot to learn. We never had computors and stuff like that when i went to school. Young people i see in schools are BRILLIANT at all that stuff like my sons are but me.....it takes time to sink in brother!!!!!! But i'm trying!! I have also been writing a lot and selling my new book POETRY BURP. I have been on BBC Radio Leeds and BBC Radio York waffling away about who knows what so its all been busy, but good fun. Today i went for walk in the woods and the leaves were golden on the floor as the sun splintered through the trees. Hang on a mo, i feel a poem coming on.....

Noises Through The Wall

Its like this...my room at home, where i spend a lot of time doing things poets do like staring out of the window, playing the guitar when i should be writing poems, watching load of loud rock n'roll videos on YouTube and generally pretending i'm working..we... this room THE IMAGINATION STATION is nextdoor to my sons bedroom. My sons Ben and Jack spend a lot of time in their own room doing kids stuff like nose picking and pillow fighting and they also play a lot of games on the XBox. So i hear lots of noises coming through the wall. At the moment they are playing Just Cause II. I asked them what its about and i got told that 'Its a bit like James Bond except you are a bad James Bond'. Anyway it all sounds dramatic and i wonder if, when i am lost in my own mind , dreaming poems up, the noises somehow affect what i write. I'll have to keep a chec k on that. If you read a poem i wrote somewhere called 'Bad James Bond', you'll know why.....

Busy Is Better Than Not Busy

Just looked at the blogaroo and the last one i did is ages ago - maybe when the dinosaurs were alive so..i think i'd better do one. Been all over the shop in October. It normally busy so thats all grand. Got a new book out, POETRY BURP did a week in Northern ireland -which was fantastic by the way, been doing schools all over from Bolton, Blackpool, Chesterfield, Leeds, Gateshead and Sheffield. The Sheffield school is called Nether Edge and i have been in a few times. Its a GREAT school full of great people who love their poetry and its always grand to go back. So yep, been busy driving and travelling all over. Actually my mate the robot man Andy is going to work in Thailand today so i'm giving him a lift - not to Thailand but to the train station. I'd love to work across the sea again these things just seem to appear out of the blue. Fingers crossed. So thats about it really, thats some of the stuff that i've been up to oh and writing of course, always the writing. I asked a class the other day what books were full of, i thought i was going to get words, like books are full of words but this girl had a fra better answer. She said that books are full of surprises!! So now you know. So when you are writing you have to come up with these surprises, you have to be a Suprise Maker!!