Rebecca

Newman

Children's Writer & Poet

Blog

Poetry & me in 2023

3/4/2023

2023 is shaping up to be all about poetry for me.

In February I received the most excellent news with an offer of funding from the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries to publish an anthology of poetry for children, showcasing WA voices. The anthology will be published by Alphabet Soup Books, and co-edited by Dr Sally Murphy OAM and me!  (If you're a grown-up interested in submitting poetry for this anthology, guidelines are av...

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Prize winning poems, a short story dispenser & 2022 events

5/30/2022

2022 is rushing by and I have a few exciting things in store over the next few months!

Firstly, this month you can read one of my blackout poems in issue two of a new magazine for kids aged 10-14. Flight is a quarterly illustration and story magazine, featuring artists and writers from all over the world. You can check out the magazine here

17 & 18 September 2022 in Perth: I'll be teaming up with fabulous illustrator Cindy Lane to run a poem-and-art mini works...

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2021 A Progressive Poem

4/27/2021

This year I’m taking part in a Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, which is running during April for National Poetry Month in the USA. (Thank you to fellow Australian poet Kathryn Apel for the invitation!) The Progressive Poem was the brainchild of Irene Latham back in 2012 and since 2020 Margaret Simon has taken the baton as poem coordinator.

During April the poem has been passing from blog to blog with each poet-blogger adding a line. There’s a list of particip...

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A magical poem anthology and a Christmas carol

11/26/2020

In October I was thrilled to open a parcel and find a beautiful Bloomsbury anthology with one of my poems in it. The anthology is Fire Burn, Cauldron Bubble: magical poems chosen by Paul Cookson. My poem is on page 97 and is called ‘Potion problems’. All the poems have a magical theme so it’s positively brimming with wizards and witches and spells and potions and dragons and more! (The perfect Christmas gift for the primary school bookworm in your life &hell...

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Pandemics, poetry, and publication

4/11/2020

Isn’t 2020 a WEIRD year? I’ve been extremely lucky — in between all the weird stuff I’ve had some wonderful happenings, too. After my Paper Bird Fellowship event back in January, I had a poem published in the March 2020 issue of The School Magazine. This one’s called ‘The Button Jar’ and has a fabulous illustration by Cheryl Orsini to go with it.

Also in March: I was interviewed by author Nadia L King about poetry and poetry writing. ...

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Let’s Talk Children’s Poetry! (a Paper Bird Fellowship Evening)

1/15/2020

If you follow me on social media, you might already know that I finished 2019 on a high note with a second place in Jackie Hosking’s rhyming poetry competition. The end of 2019 also heralded the end of my Paper Bird Fellowship. I was a Poet-in-Residence at Paper Bird for Term 4, and during my residency I was working on my children’s poetry collection, Rules for Sneezing.

Which leads me to this exciting news:

A Paper Bird Fellowship Evening: Let’s Talk Poetry...

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In which I become a poet-in-residence

11/30/2019

The past few months have been busy! Here’s a quick recap:

This term I’m the recipient of a Paper Bird Fellowship. This means I have the use of a writing studio at Paper Bird during Term 4 while I work on my children’s poetry collection. The collection is tentatively called Rules for Sneezing. I’ve been writing some brand new poems and polishing up some old ones, and preparing the whole collection to be ready for submission to publishers. It’s bee...

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Poetry magic

2/2/2019

So, 2019 is off to a fabulous start! I sold a poem to Bloomsbury Education in the UK for their 2019 children’s poetry anthology Fire Burn, Cauldron Bubble: Magical Poems Chosen by Paul Cookson. This is extra exciting news for me – I’ve had quite a few poems published by The School Magazine, but this will be my first poem in an anthology. I’m looking forward to holding a book in my hands later this year. (My poem is called ‘Potion problems’.)

Here’s a picture of me posting off...

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End-of-2018 book tag: children’s books

1/24/2019

Back in July I tagged myself to share a post about my favourite books from the first half of 2018. So it seems like a good idea to tie off 2018 with my favourites from the second half.

If you’re new here: I focus on books for under 12s. (I just don’t get through many books for grown-ups — or young adults — in 6 months.)

* = I borrowed the book from the library

**= I received a review copy of the book (but not for this blog, I wear a lot of booky hats out there in the real wor...

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Mid-year book tag: children’s books

7/27/2018

I’ve seen a few mid-year book tag posts on book blogs recently. (No-one has tagged me, but that won’t stop me joining in.) Because no-one has officially tagged me, I’ve changed up the questions a bit to suit myself. That’s the upside of tagging yourself.

I’m all about children’s books for under 12s. (I just don’t get through many books for grown-ups — or young adults — in 6 months.)

If there’s an asterisk it means I borrowed it from a library. I do love a library.

...

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A new studio and other exciting happenings

11/11/2017

Lots of excellent happenings have been … happening … around here. A few months back  I said yes to a shared studio space at Paper Bird Books and Arts in Fremantle. There are three of us being creative in the studio space. It’s light and bright, and since I started writing here (about twice a week) I’ve finished three picture books and I’ve written a good number of poems, too.

Don’t you love this mat?

Speaking of poems (and not so much about mats), The School Magazine ha...

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Thrives on neglect

2/3/2017

New Years’ Resolutions — I have some.

Writing
Submit manuscripts to publishers.

I need to send more of my work out on submission. Shortly after coming to this conclusion: I submitted a short story to an anthology on 5th January. Pat on the back for me.

Garden
Turn my garden into a low-maintenance garden that has actual living plants in it.

Ready to plant …

I bought pots of succulents. Lots of them. I don’t love succulents — I prefer leafier sorts of plants that rustle when t...

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Happy World Poetry Day!

3/20/2016

Some of you more savvy readers will already know that this year The School Magazine is celebrating 100 years in print. To add to the excitement, today is World Poetry Day, and Jackie Hosking has talked a bunch(?)* of poets who’ve been published in The School Magazine into a poetry blog tour to mark the day. (Yay!)

My very first poem in The School Magazine was called ‘Odd Socks’, published in June 2014 — and that was the first time I’d been paid for a poem, too. The opening ...

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Autumn and baking and more poems

3/15/2016

Since we returned from the summer holidays, I have taught myself how to make fromage blanc (with the help of the internet, and a kit), and one of my lovely sisters-in-law taught me how to make sourdough bread.

Here’s my first attempt at fromage blanc:

Fromage blanc. Weird, huh?

And here’s my latest batch of sourdough:

As you can see, my sister-in-law is a very good teacher.

I’ve also been busy poem-making, and you can see two of my recent poems over at Poetry Tag:

  1. Beneath t...

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A monkey skipping rhyme

2/8/2016

Over the school holidays we visited friends in Europe. The landscape was so different, and I took lots and lots of photos (it turns out I have a thing for bare tree branches arching over streetlights in the gloom. Especially if it also involves water nearby and/or cobblestones).

More on that later.

Today I have a skipping rhyme for you in celebration of Year of the Monkey. (Happy Chinese New Year!)

You can share it with anyone and print it off — as long as you leave my name a...

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Spring fever

9/18/2015

Happy spring! You can tell it’s spring because this is flowering in my garden.

Term 3 is always the busiest term of the year at our house. The calendar pages stuck to our fridge (actually just A4 sheets I’ve printed out) get so full of writing that they can’t take the weight of all that activity and they drop onto the floor … and slide underneath the fridge. Calendar pages that hide underneath the fridge really don’t help much with the Term 3 Busy-ness.

(Also, on a side note...

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Poems in Print

4/13/2015

The year is skipping along nicely. Here it is April and I still haven’t posted up a photo of my poem from the March issue of The School Magazine (specifically ‘Countdown’). You can see me, very excited, on the day my copy arrived in the mail:

The illustrations are by the wonderful Kimberly Andrews.

What else has been happening?

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Research for poetry writers

3/3/2015

Lorraine reading from one of her poetry collections, Guinea Pig Town.

Today I welcome Lorraine Marwood as a guest-poster. Lorraine is the author of novels, verse novels and poetry collections. She’s here today as part of a blog tour to celebrate the launch of the latest poetry collection — Celebrating Australia: A year in poetry, and while she’s here she agreed to share some wisdom about research and poetry writers. Over to you, Lorraine!

Research for poetry writers

I’m w...

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More writing, more drawing, and a lullaby for a rat

1/27/2015

A scene from The Juniper Tree. Collage. By me!

It’s hot, hot, hot in Perth this week. That means more tomatoes picked from my garden (yay!) and more washing flapping on the line (also yay! because it dries super fast in this hot weather, and if there’s no washing flapping on the line then that means it’s still in the laundry and that can’t be good).

Other than picking tomatoes and pegging out washing, I’ve also been writing heaps of new poems (here’s one of them — a Rat Lulla...

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A poem about a bullock

11/5/2014

You can read my newest poem at the Poetry Tag site — the poem is called ‘Bullock’.

Sally gave me the following words:

OX

DREAM

BECAUSE

MINE

What a combo!

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Writing a picture book – Tania McCartney

9/6/2014

Today Tania McCartney is celebrating the launch of her newest picture book — Tottie and Dot — with a Blog Blast. She’s visiting a whole truckload of blogs all day today. Heaps of them. (A special welcome if you’ve blog-hopped from somewhere else to read this post!) 

Firstly, a bit about the book. Here’s what the publisher says:

Tottie and Dot live side by side. They drink marshmallow tea in the morning. Side-by-side. They water blooms in the afternoon garden. Side-by-sid...

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In my garden – September 2014

9/1/2014

I love pottering around in our (rather small) kitchen garden and I like to plant seeds rather than seedlings. I’ve got some seed packets of vegetables — heirloom varieties — but last year lots of the seeds I planted directly in the soil didn’t germinate. So this year (three weeks ago, in fact) I decided to try planting them in seed-raising trays and then planting them out. Here are some before shots:

In this tray I sowed seeds of lettuce, sunflowers, ...

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Writing in Winter

8/23/2014

The winter months have been busy ones. The most exciting Busy Thing was that I set off to the east coast of Australia for the SCBWI* conference in Sydney. I caught up with so many authors and illustrators I don’t get to see very often (because they live on the east coast of Australia). Mostly I forgot to take photos because I was too busy conferencing, oops. But here I am catching up with the lovely Katrina Germein when I did manage to organise a photo:

With Ka...

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My latest poem

6/4/2014

I’m just stopping in quickly to say you can now read my latest poem on the Poetry Tag site. Sally Murphy’s words for me this time were:

DRINK

SHOUT

SHUT

TRUE 

At a first glance they feel like they belong in a loud-ish sort of poem, don’t you think?

Oh, and Happy Start of Winter, too!

~ Rebecca

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Odd Socks

5/18/2014

On Friday I found a yellow envelope in my post office box with two copies of The School Magazine. This was because I have a poem published in the June issue of their ‘Blast Off’ magazine. (If you get it at your school, my poem is on page 7, it’s called ‘Odd Socks’.). I was especially thrilled to see Kerry Millard‘s gorgeous illustrations to go with it. Lucky me!

Then on Saturday my Poetry Tag pal Sally Murphy (who was in Sydney for the CBCA confe...

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The Writing Process Blog Hop

5/18/2014

I’ve been tagged by Lorraine Marwood to answer four questions in the Writing Process Blog Hop. (Thanks, Lorraine!) You’ll find my answers further down this post  — but first, a bit about Lorraine …

THE TAGGER 
LORRAINE MARWOOD

Lorraine is an award-winning writer. She has several poetry collections out (Guinea Pig Town is her most recent) and another poetry collection will be out in 2015. Lorraine also writes stories, novels, and verse novels.

Check out ...

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Playing tag … with poetry

5/5/2014

I love reading poetry (especially out loud) and I’ve been scribbling poems in a notebook for quite a few years now.

2013 was a big year for me poetry-wise. Around the middle of the year The School Magazine sent me an email to say they wanted to publish two of my poems. If you’re in NSW and/or you are a regular reader of The School Magazine, you can read the first of those poems in an issue coming out very, very soon. (It’s a poem about … somethin...

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