Stuff I'm (not) sorry for by Maxine Beneba Clarke

This is such a fun poetry collection children will just revel in. It’s full of word play, rhymes, and kid’s humour, like the nose picker who ‘stuffed the snot between his toes’, Josy who ‘got busted spitting cherry pips real high over the school fence’, the go-cart propelled by a fart, the kid who becomes the ‘viscious-huge-tyrannosaurus flesh-eating-sharp-clawed dinosaur Rex’, and so many more that will have you laughing.

There are others, though, that are more serious, as their titles may suggest: Try, Anxiety, Standing Ovation, Strange Fruit, Broken-hearted, The Smallest and Most Important of Gestures, The Black Dog. They capture feelings and anxieties, but most of all the importance of caring for others.

The brilliant thing is that at the back there is an index by poetic form, with just about every example a budding poet might want to refer to: acrostic poems, found poems, free verse, haiku, limericks, narrative verse, pantoums, sonnets and tongue twisters. What a boon for the English teacher! Easy access to examples to inspire writing in the classroom. With titles like Redback Spider Bite, Rats in the Roof, and There’s a Blowfly in the Dunny, you can’t miss. I love the challenge posed by There’s No Rhyme for Purple: “you can rhyme with purple, just give it a try!'

There are 99 poems in this book. Something for everyone.

Themes: Poetry, Humour, Words, Rhymes, Fun.

Helen Eddy