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 line of the poem came to me while I was at work one morning but I can’t remember if I had odd socks on that day. I do have a history of wearing non-matching socks. You would think that people wouldn’t notice socks … especially since I mostly get around in jeans. In fact, it’s surprising the number of Helpful Souls who will point out to you when your socks don’t match. Those same people are unfailingly astonished to discover it wasn’t a mistake, and that I left the house wearing clashing socks on purpose. Since June 2014, I can tell any Helpful Souls that my wearing odd socks worked out to be quite profitable, really.

The icing on the cake was that Kerry Millard illustrated my poem. As you can imagine, June 2014 was a truly wonderful month for me. (I am strongly in favour of The School Magazine continuing in print for another 100 years!)

You can read ‘Odd Socks’ on the POEMS tab of my website.

So — Happy World Poetry Day to you!

* Internet wisdom suggests ‘an iamb of poets’ but that doesn’t really trip off the tongue, does it? Oh, the irony. In my online wanderings I stumbled across someone’s vote for  ‘a jubilee of poets’ and maybe I should go with that …