Picture a Poem

This book is an accessible and enjoyable introduction to shape poems, particularly as they now feature in the National Literacy Strategy. The book is A4 size with each page given over to one poem and its shape. There is no illustration apart from the poem itself and the quality of the poetry is integral to the success of the format. Douthwaite writes about a wide and diverse range of subjects and characters. There are poems on football, knickers, houses, sisters, dinosaurs and wood-lice to name but a few. There are characters to meet like 'Normous Norman or Tim McCann - a tin can who has his heart broken down in the dump by Brassy Brollystand 'who'd led him on then left him for an aluminum pan'. It is all too easy for shape poems to become words written in the shape of the subject of the poem. The delicate balance and interdependence of words and shape is both difficult to achieve and to sustain throughout a collection. These poems repay reading and working around the shapes because of the strength of the language, the humour, the word and shape play. They should also be useful in encouraging children to write their own shape poems.