2025
Valerie Bloom – 'Myself in a Poem'
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Valerie Bloom MBE is the author of several volumes of poetry for adults and children, picture books, pre-teen and teenage novels and stories for children, and has edited several collections of children’s poetry. She has presented poetry programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, as wells as contributing to many other radio and television programmes.
Valerie’s poetry has been featured in ‘Poems on the Underground’, included in the GCSE and Caribbean exam syllabuses, and selected for over 600 anthologies. Her many awards include a Nestlé Smarties bronze award for Fruits and the 2022 CLiPPA award for Stars With Flaming Tails. She is also the winner of the Voice Community Award for Literature and has an Honorary Master’s degree from the University of Kent. In 2008 she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Year Honours. |
The 2025 lecture was be held in loving memory of Morag and in celebration of her life and work. Morag was Professor of Children's Poetry at the University of Cambridge, and one of her proudest achievements was the Caribbean Poetry Project, which brought together poets, scholar and teachers from the Caribbean and the UK.
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The legacy of Morag’s work, particularly The Caribbean Poetry Project, which influenced teaching and syllabuses in both the UK and Caribbean, made Valerie Bloom an extremely fitting speaker for this year’s Lecture. Valerie is a renowned children’s poet, known for her distinctive use of English and Patois in her poems, and draws on her Jamaican heritage in her poetry and advocacy of diverse children’s poetry.
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We do apologise for the poor quality of the audio recording in the first few minutes of this lecture.
The problem is rectified at 6.55.
The problem is rectified at 6.55.
