Inspirational English, Issue 42, Jan/Feb 2018 Inspirational English, Issue 42, Jan Feb 2018 | Page 10

Hi Josie, your poems inspire young learners all
over the world. Would you tell us how you got into
writing?
In 2006 I decided to volunteer one hour weekly to
visiting my local primary school to help in the
classroom, as many retired people do. It was here, that
a few months later, I met a group of children who
encouraged me to write poems for them. In the
following year I met new children who asked me to
make a website and to put on here the poems which I’d
written for the children in the previous year and to
continue writing for them.
You used to be a teacher. Has this work helped you
in creating poems for children?
I was a teacher of secretarial subjects, and I believe
that teaching Pitman’s shorthand gave me a good
phonological awareness, ie an awareness of
sounds within words because you write actual
sounds on paper with shorthand. It is this very
ability that helps in writing poetry which has rhythm
or metre, and the awareness of sounds for rhyming.
10