Teachers – these four winter poems of mine can be enjoyed by your class in different ways:
simply by listening, or by a mix of listening and pausing to discuss, or by listening twice and thinking up alternatives to selected words along the way, or by sketching while listening, or by taking a line and flying with it – into different, individual or class-built poems. Chosen phrases can also be set to music (using a familiar tune or inventing one), or re-written in different styles.
The main thing is – ENJOY, all of you! It’s the end of term, with Christmas zooming up fast, so above all, let the children imagine, feel and dream!
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Freak in the Fog
Evil spirit? Wizard? Witch?
Jump in ditch!
Through the fog, uncurling, uncurling,
comes my teacher, strolling past.
Below the Snow
beneath it, sleepers, tightly curled.
ticking hearts deep, down below.
below, lungs heaving, breathing air.
Still, white, winter world:
beneath – another, tightly furled.
Snowflake on the football pitch
Fluffy
Frizzy
Frosty
Frozen
Feathery
Floaty
Fairy-wing-light
Fascinating
Flickering
Finger-tip-tiny
Fragile
Flimsy
Flattened
Winter Lights
dazzling, diamond gold.
The trees are witches’ broomsticks.
The sky is cavern-dark.
The frozen grass is hard as glass.
The air is scissor-sharp.
Watch them waving! See them smile!
Hear them shout – Hooray!
I’m writing this at the end of November, but January is another dark, chilly, murky month, with no Christmas around the corner. BUT – there’s cheer of another kind – my upcoming BOOK will be out on the 9th!
Squeak! Squawk! Roar! Amazing Animal Poems (Otter-Barry Books) has over 50 bright, rhythmic, mind-stretchy, funny and fascinating poems, with super illustrations by artist Hannah Asen.
Kate Williams 
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