Over the next few months, I am on the road a lot promoting poetry for and by children in all kinds of ways — most importantly with my Hot Spot Poetry Tour of New Zealand. So the stack of poetry books to read and review just keeps growing. One of the key aims of Poetry Shelf is to draw attention to New Zealand poetry from books to events to opinions. In order to highlight recent books that I have enjoyed, I aim to do a cluster of shorter snapshots along with some slightly longer pieces.

As I make my travels through schools, communities and various venues, I have been wondering about the divide and the overlap between children’s writing and adult writing. Is there a void or is there a fertile set of bridges? Are the kind of hierarchies that Margaret Mahy endured still at work?  The more I think about the issue, the more complex it becomes.