pottypoets.com The King's England Press pottypoets.com
WRITERS INTO EDUCATION

If you were to have asked small independent publishers The King's England Press, back in the closing years of the 20th century, whether they could ever have foreseen that their sole children's poet, virgin author Gez Walsh, would stride so boldly into the new millennium and stamp his mark so firmly on the poetry world that a new genre, Potty Poetry, would be created, the suggestion would probably have been met with a bemused silence, if not outright disbelief.

None of us possesses the ability to tell the future, but that of Gez Walsh and the rest of the Potty Poets, for whom he led the way, now seems more certain than ever in the face of alarming statistics showing that one in six young people currently leaves the UK education system unable to read or write. The desire to be one small cog in reversing this trend and combatting what has been described by some educationalists as "a national disaster" lies at the heart of the Potty Poets' core values, which were first embodied in 1997 with The Spot on My Bum.

It's sometimes difficult to think back to the world as it was 10 years ago, to bring to mind the values and attitudes of the time. 1997 was, of course, the year Princess Diana died. It was also the year that saw the world of politics hail the first labour government in eighteen years, scientists announce the birth of the first successfully cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, and the literary world hail the first book of the Potty Poets series, The Spot on My Bum, as ground-breaking. Back in those days, Gez was only just embarking on his new vocation, having traded social work for a writing career, and the book which was originally penned to help his young dyslexic son was about to take the bookshops by storm.

Today, some ten years on, and 200,000+ copies later (surely some sort of a record for a poetry book?), the genre which Gez made his own has a number of imitators but none to outshine the original. Bums, farts, bogies and burps are now subjects authors no longer fear to explore, a triumph of Gez's no-nonsense approach in his pursuit to provide learning through fun, proving without doubt that spots are good for kids!

So what's potty poetry all about? Neither golden daffodils nor authors holed up in isolated garrets suffering for their art. When of young people leave the education system without the necessary skills with which to read or write, the ethos behind the series is a simple one: to get young people reading books. Especially those who wouldn't normally look at a book, let alone open and enjoy one. Since teachers find that the subject matter can be used to stimulate youngsters who wouldn't touch a poetry book with the proverbial barge-pole, the series has fulfilled the function of providing a gateway (albeit a rather wacky one!) into the world of books for many thousands of reluctant readers UK wide, as well as creating a barrel of laughs into the bargain.

In the last 10 years the Potty Poets series has grown to 22 titles in all and has spawned this web site to meet public demand for updates and information. Fans log on to keep track of new developments, communicate with their favourite author, and send in their own poems inspired by the books. Teachers, librarians and event organisers also make use of the site as a tool for arranging author visits, book week events and public appearances. Gez Walsh and Chris White, the two main purveyors of Potty Poetry, travel many thousands of miles each year to provide performance and workshop input for schools, libraries, at festivals and teaching conferences and venues as diverse as shopping centres, muddy playing fields, hospitals and prisons!

Chris White became a Potty Poet in 2000 with the publication of Bitey The Veggie Vampire, subsequently followed up by three more collections, the latest being Shark in the Toilet!. With art school training, Chris brings another dimension to the world of Potty Poetry. His crazy cartoon style provides an additional visual stimulus to engage difficult-to-interest pupils, whilst his technique of inciting the audience not only to chant along with such gems as "The Big, Big, Guinea Pig" but also to draw the said rodent as well rounds off the experience and ensures that everybody participates. A riot of fun, Chris's live act has become legendary, his wacky world of animal based cartoon creations earning him the title "Derby's Dr. Doolittle"!

Whilst Potty Poetry regularly reverberates amid the classrooms and corridors of the education system, it sometimes escapes into the world at large and is beamed across the airwaves into the great British public's living rooms for everyone to enjoy. Both Chris and Gez's material has recently been given a 21st century makeover by popular young CBBC presenters who've introduced Potty Poetry to the nation. The work of the authors also features on various BBC web sites as writing resources, including BBC jam.

'If just one kid who previously never read a word picks up a book and starts reading as a result of something I've performed or written' says Gez Walsh, 'then that alone will have been worth ten years of being pointed out in the street as "Mr Spot on the Bum". '

Fans of the series will be keen to know that both Gez Walsh and Chris White have new books planned to coicide with World Book Day 2008. Gez's collection, Great Aunt Fanny's Moustache, and Chris's offering, Don't Put Dave in the Microwave, each promises another huge steaming dollop of the winning formula of poetic lunacy which has been tried and tested over the last decade and which has repeatedly proved to have put the "fun" into "fundamental literacy".

Plans for the future are biased firmly towards channeling the vast support and interest generated by the Potty Poets into a project aiming to benefit any individual or group of young people marginalised or disaffected by the education system and, utilizing the new "F" word - FUN - encouraging these youngsters back into the scope of learning and literacy. Unlimit-Ed is a not-for-profit joint venture between publishers The King's England Press (owners of the Potty Poets imprint) and the Godfather of Potty Poetry, Gez Walsh. In collaboration with various other professionals, Gez will head up a team whose aim is to use the Potty Poets approach to provide beyond-the-classroom learning experiences so that those students for whom mainstream education has proved unsuccessful will still be offered the chance to participate.

While it is only early days yet to claim that Potty Poetry has the same impact and importance as, say, Romantic poetry, the Metaphysicals or the Mersey Sound did, nevertheless the growing legions of its adherents testify not only to a decade of daftness but also a decade of deftness in bringing poetry to a whole new audience.

It's basic. It's simple. It works! So try it.