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Mooch-and-Moo ©
reprint Countdown,
The School Magazine, April 2010 No. 3
Illustrated by Kerry Millard
Mooch-and-moo,
mooch-and-moo,
there’s nothing much else
for a cow to do.
I’m hopeless at diving
or playing kazoo.
I can’t ride a bike
or fly to Peru.
I can’t cook a pie
or a green-grass stew,
or leap place-to-place
like a big kangaroo.
So there’s nothing much else
for a cow to do,
but to wander about
going mooch-and-moo.
And yet, I make milk
from the grass that I chew!
Now that it something
I know I can do!
So moo-chew-moo,
moo-chew-moo!
Making milk is something
I know I can do! |
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Bird Impressions ©
Two cockatoos soar and
pin back blue sky
with yellow-beak screeches and
snow-white wings.
Left in their wake,
two tiny clouds,
crested-white and angel-winged,
drift
like bird impressions.
I’d stepped out of a suburban shop, thinking about what I’d just bought. When I heard screeches in the sky I looked up. What I saw was a pair of cockatoos - two pure white creatures flapping jubilantly against a bright, blue sky. That was startling and satisfying enough. But then I glanced to one side. Immediately behind the birds, were two small, fleecy clouds. They were bird shaped, with wings outstretched - almost replicas of the cockatoos. I couldn’t believe. It was a magic moment. My purchase seemed dull and inconsequential after that! |
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Janeen has won the Tom Black Memorial Poetry Section of the 2008 Eyre Writers' Awards with her poem "Only Then":
Only then ©
it was as if he’d been there forever
in the yellow chill of that dawn
in that park
and in those clothes
outsized and pinned with medals
only the first sound of the bugle
as it fled towards the fading moon
caused him to stir
ease his back to straightening till
chest was proud
eyes fixed ahead
gnarled fingers
fist-curled by his side as he
remembered them.
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A poem of mine received Highly Commended prize in the recent Ipswich International Poetry Competition:
Flood ©
If a flood can ignore important signs like
no standing and one hour parking
and enter a person’s home without knocking
and, without a broom, sweep out life’s photographs
so that images are changed forever,
then it can easily ignore
the cry of a child,
whose hand
loses grip
with another.
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I was thrilled to learn recently that one of my children’s poems, The really big sneeze!, was a runner up in a British poetry competition.
The Belmont Poetry Competition had 400 entries and the winners were chosen by children!
The really, big sneeze! ©
A sneeze is simply
a remarkable snizzle
that starts with a fizz
and becomes soon a frizzle.
It tetches the toes
with a tingling shiver
then lightningly, tighteningly
springs to a quiver
that itches and snitches
the skin round your nose
and your eyes are all spilling
like some leaky hose
and your face has gone suckery
pulled-in and puckery
for the snizzle
is now spinning stars in your head
and they're flashing and splashing
a dizzy, bright red
and you draw back your lips
like you've sucked sour plums
and out in the air
an explosion just comes
that shatters and splatters
the air like a rocket - and where is that hanky
that’s deep in your pocket!
And you squint and you blink
and you sink to your knees
and exhausted, you mutter,
'Now, that was a sneeze!'
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I am also represented in these poetry anthologies.
Click on
a book cover to read more about it.
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100 Australian
Poems for Children
(2002) Random
House
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There was
a Big Fish - Limericks
(1992) ERA |
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Christmas
Crackers
(1990) Omnibus |
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Stay Loose,
Mother Goose!
(1990) Omnibus
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Fractured
Fairytales and Ruptured Rhymes
(1990) Omnibus
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Off the
Planet!
(1989) Omnibus
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Four and
Twenty Lamingtons
(1988) Omnibus |
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Vile Verse
(1988) Omnibus |
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Petrifying
Poems
(1986) Omnibus |
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Putrid Poems
(1985) Omnibus |
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