After twenty plus years of teaching creative writing workshops in schools, Harry Laing realised he’d been accumulating poems written for mainly primary age children and that it was time to bring them together, find an illustrator and make a book of them. Shoctopus is the result, with the subtitle poems to grip you and Harry is hoping those tentacles will reach far and wide in the form of verb-poems, shape-poems, chants, songs, rhyme, free verse, even rap.
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As you’d imagine, many of the poems are full of fun demonstrating Harry’s characteristic comic take alongside lyrical reflections and fantasies often with natural world themes.
The illustrator Clinton De Vere has previously exhibited his work at the Left Hand Gallery and his often humorous line and wash drawings are the perfect complement to the poems.
Everyone – kids, parents, grandparents – is welcome to the launch of Shoctopus at the Braidwood Library on Thursday 30th July 4-5 pm when Harry’s poems will be bursting to get out onto the airwaves. Particularly the Wheelie Bin.
