Welcome to the website of poet & literacy advocate
An award-winning author of eight books, Mandy Coe writes poetry for adults and children. She works in education and literacy projects though residencies, workshops and readings.
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Latest poetry collection for children
Belonging Street
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Look out for the tree that saved a town; dip your toe in the Milky Way; sing the City Seed Song; play in Kitty Cat Street - and then come home to Belonging Street. ...a magical and heartwarming collection.
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Children's Book of the Week...The Sunday Times
In the 'Top Ten' kids poetry books... The Independent
"Mandy Coe is is one of our most exciting poets
writing for children." Pie Corbett
Otter-Barry Books 2020
ISBN 9781913074807
about
Author of six poetry collections, Mandy has received the Manchester Poetry Prize and a Hawthornden Fellowship. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC radio and television.
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Mandy writes for, and works with, adults and children in schools, universities, teacher training colleges and community arts projects.
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Past residencies and commissions include collaborations with Bath Festivals, Poetry School, The Poetry Society, Book Trust, National Galleries and The Princes' Trust.
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Mandy lives in the North West of England and is a Visiting Fellow of The Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.
photo credit, Sarah Maclennan
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REVIEWS for books
'Our thoughts are bees: Writers Working with Schools (Coe/Sprackland)
"...a writer in a school can indeed create moments that can be life-enhancing, life-changing even - can help a children become a reader for life, and maybe a writer too."
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Foreward, MICHAEL MORPURGO
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poetry READINGS
In conversation, Michael Rosen
& Mandy Coe, Let in the Stars,
Manchester Literature Festival
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"I don’t think I’ve ever been to a literary event with two less pretentious speakers....
Both writers approached poetry as a lived personal experience...
not just for themselves but for everyone."
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Bryony Makin, Chapter & Verse, Manchester Literature Festival Blog,
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photo credit, The Writing School at MMU
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Today's poetry page
two poems for children
EXTINCT
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We live in books and photographs,
our stories all begin with ‘Once’,
three, two, going, going…gone.
Barbary Lion, Atitlan Grebe,
Caribbean Monk Seal, Carolina Parakeet.
We tasted good, our forests were yours
Our horn was valuable, you wore our furs,
three, two, going, going…gone.
Laughing Owl, Passenger Pigeon,
Javan Tiger, Japanese Sea Lion.
We flew and swam beneath the sun,
nested, hunted, raised our young,
three, two, going, going…gone.
Western Black Rhinoceros, Aldabra Snail,
Pyrenean Ibex, Wake Island Rail
Shells, tails, whiskers and bone,
three, two, going, going…
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Poem © Mandy Coe, 2010, used by permission of the author and Salt Publishing
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WATCH OUT FOR THE WHISTLER
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He whistles to my giddy ant
he whistles fish and ships,
he whistles to the boys and ghouls
with magic in his lips.
He whistles with his hat and soul
practising day and neat.
Without rhyme or raisin, he whistles
to the birds and beasts.
His whistle is a spanner in the words
and sooner or alligator,
sink or swan,
he’ll whistle our world upside-dawn.
The whistling man will whistle us
out of our shoes and sharks.
Truth and pies, white or wrong
beware the whistler’s mixed-up song.
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Poem © Mandy Coe ‘Belonging Street’
Otter-Barry Books (2020)
AUDIO:
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