Poetry for pleasure: promoting poetry to children in public libraries

This article reports an investigation of the attitudes and opinions of children’s librarians towards poetry, and towards its promotion in the public library. It also reports some attitudes towards literature promotion to young people in general. A series of structured interviews with library professionals currently working in the public sector strongly indicate that children’s librarians are themselves enthusiastic concerning poetry, and are firmly convinced both of the benefits incurred by children encouraged to read, write and listen to poems from a very early age, and of children’s own enjoyment of this genre. Due to its brevity and memorability, poetry is regarded by the interviewees as the most accessible literary form for poor or reluctant readers, despite its wider image as a neglected and “difficult” genre for children and children. INTRODUCTION This article is based on a study carried out for a Masters dissertation at Loughborough University. The study uncovered a wealth of literature investigating the general subject of literature promotion in public libraries, much of it concentrating on services for young readers. Conversely, a lack of work concentrating specifically on poetry and its promotion in public libraries was identified. As poetry has been shown to be important to children, albeit considered elitist by some, a study was devised to investigate the attitudes and opinions of professional librarians towards poetry for children within the context of literature promotion to children in general. There are various reasons why the promotion of poetry to children in public libraries is important, including the fact that it introduces them to unfamiliar language, repetition, rhyming words, language patterns and words from an oral tradition. Poetry is suited to the spoken word and helps in the development of oral communication and listening skills and of complex comprehension skills. It can also be said to have an emotional, imaginative and spiritual dimension, and to contribute to the growth of children in emotional and moral ways as well as to their intellectual development. The investigation involved assessing the extent to which public libraries are actively engaged in the promotion of poetry and fiction to children, and the means by which any such promotion is taking place. The study employed the idea of poetry in the widest sense of the word – ranging from limericks and nursery rhymes to that which does not have a rhyme. This is discussed in more detail below. The investigation considered the relative importance of promotional activities across a selection of different authorities, and evaluated the