AF Harrold's Pocket Book of Pocket Poems
About Author
AF Harrold is an English poet and children's author. He spends his time showing off on stage, writing poems and books, and stroking his beard (it helps churn the ideas). He often visits schools, reading poems and running workshops and juggling ideas.
He is the author of Carnegie Medal shortlisted The Worlds We Leave Behind (illus. Levi Pinfold), the Fizzlebert Stump series (Sarah Horne), and the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal longlisted The Imaginary (illus. Emily Gravett). The Imaginary has since been adapted into an animated film, released in the UK on Netflix in 2024.
Interview
AF Harrold's Pocket Book of Pocket Poems (Bloomsbury Education)
March 2025
In AF Harrold's Pocket Book of Pocket Poems, a collection of poems that have been written on postcards, you'll discover poems about snakes that hug, blue days and penguins with allergies - and many, many more. These (very short) poems will mostly make you chuckle, but there are also thoughtful poems that pack a surprise in just a few words.
In ReadingZone's Q&A with AF Harrold, you'll discover what a day in the life of a poet might look like, why his poems are often funny, and some brilliant tips to help children write their own 'postcard poems'.
AF Harrold introduces his Pocket Book of Pocket Poems, and gives his top poetry writing tips
"There are different types of humour, different types of comedy... And sometimes funny is an unexpected word.
I like all sorts of comedy, but mucking about with words is one of my favourites."
1. How did you become a poet, and what does a day in the life of a poet look like?
I was a grumpy teenager who wrote miserable poems about his feelings and emotions and girls and all that sort of stuff, but who now and again wrote a funny poem. And people actually liked the funny ones and so I wrote more of those, and I got into performing them, at open mic nights and comedy clubs and poetry slams and here I am today, still making new poems, and still, sometimes, making people laugh.
A day in the life of a poet…? Well, I get up and feed the cats. Then I go for a walk down by the river and look at the ducks. Then I come home check my e-mails. Then I make lunch and feed Iszi (another children's author who lives in the house). Then I look at the internet and at four o'clock I feed the cats…
I mean, usually it's all quite boring. (Sometimes in there I might write a poem, or do some edits on a story I'm writing, or answer a Q&A like this, or make a video of me talking like you might find elsewhere on here, or I might record an interview for someone's podcast, or I might write some poems on some postcards to send to random people, or I might read a book or two, or some comics, or I might write some scenes and make up some characters for a Dungeons and Dragons game I run for some friends each week, or I might look out the window.)
But on other days I get up really early and go to the train station in the dark and catch a train to some strange exotic place and visit a primary school for a day and make the kids laugh and teachers worried, and help them write some poems and have fun with words… And some days I don't. I hope that's all clear.
2. Can you tell us about your 'Pocket Book of Pocket Poems' collection, and how the collection came about?
One of the things I like to do is handwrite little poems on the backs of postcards and send them off to people, because I think most of the post people get is boring (or worse) and so it might be nice for them to get a funny little poem on some random postcard turn up out of the blue for no reason at all. It might give them a little smile before they go to school or work.
And because I've been doing this for ages, I've written lots of small poems (because there's not a lot of space on a postcard), and so I thought it was time to collect them together and see what they looked like, and so we've got a little book of little poems here, over 200 of them, and Jack Viant drew some fun cartoons to go with them and hey presto, a book of (mostly) daft poems that may or may not fit in your pocket (depending how big your pockets are).
3. Can you share a couple of your favourite 'postcard poems' with us?
The poems in the book are arranged so they get shorter as the book goes on. The longest ones, right at the beginning, are 60 words long, and they go all the way down to a zero word poem at the end. Here's one with 29 words in which, as I write this Q&A in February feels a long way away… it's called Big Summer Poem
It's too hot to pick a pen up.
It's too hot to write a poem.
It's too hot to think about this.
It's too hot. See ya. I'm going.
And I can remember writing that one a few years ago, in the height of the heat of summer and it really was too much!
Here's a cold one, that I wrote when I visited the English School of Mongolia in March, a time when there was still snow on the ground there and it was still really cold. I sat in the school staff room, between sessions with the kids, and jotted this one down. (There was no beach near the school, Mongolia being landlocked, but you can imagine where the inspiration came from.)
At the Seaside
The snowman
on holiday
was sat upon the sand,
a hanky on his head
and
an ice cream in his hand.
He took another lick
and
a feeling in him grew:
I wonder if this was
somebody
that I knew?
4. How would you suggest children go about writing their own poem on a postcard?
If you've got someone in your life who might enjoy receiving a poem-on-a-postcard from you, then why not do it? You could write one of mine out neat, or you could have a go at writing one of your own. A quick idea is to write a little 'riddle' poem, a little 'Who am I?' poem - if you can come up with four or five clues, little descriptions of an animal (for instance), jot them down on a bit of scrap paper. ('I have a big fluffy tail.' 'I like to climb trees.' 'I do all my shopping in the autumn so I don't have to go far from home in the winter.' 'I move fast.' 'My exotic cousin can fly between trees, but I have to hop.' 'I'm a nut-hider.')
Think about what order you might put them in - put the most general idea first, that's the one that could be lots of different animals, and put the most specific one, the one that can only be the animal you're thinking of, last - then it will be a better riddle. You can call it 'Who Am I?' or 'Guess My Name!' or anything you want, but try to not to call it, 'The Squirrel Poem'.
5. What are your top tips for helping children to enjoy writing poetry?
The nice thing about poems and about writing poems, is that they can be as short as you like. You're not having to come up with loads and loads of ideas and proper sentences and characters like you might if you're writing a whole book. And unless someone says to you, 'We're going to be writing poems that rhyme and have a regular rhythm, a beat that goes de-dum de-dum de-dum,' then you can just make you poem out of ordinary sentences and perfectly normal words - nothing fancy. So I think, remembering that, takes a bit of pressure off. Chillax!
If you've got an idea (I want to write a poem describing a squirrel) then great, just get on and do it. If you're stuck for an idea, have a look at some nursery rhymes you remember from when you were little and muck about with them. There are a couple of poems in my book which do that - there's a version of Mary Had A Little Lamb and The Wheels on the Bus, that just swap some words about and be silly and make something new. You don't have to start with a blank bit of paper every time.
Also, you can make poems with a friend - 'Hey!' you might say, 'Let's describe a squirrel,' and then you might take a few minutes each to scribble some ideas (what do they do, what do they eat, what do they look like, what do they think when it starts to rain or the wind blows really hard and they're really high up in a tree, what do they say to the pigeon who lands on the branch and makes it wobble…) and then come back together and compare ideas and pick out the best ones and add some spicy words in to make it funnier and think about the order and just have fun making a silly poem together.
6. Why did you give yourself an extra challenge with the length of the poems, as on each page through the book the poems are shorter by one word?
Oh! I didn't write the poems in the order they are in the book. I just collected together a load of poems I've written over the years and then organised them. So although it looks like they get shorter by one word (with sometimes three or four poems of the same length), there are actually a couple of gaps where there is no poem. So, my challenge to you is to spot the gaps where I failed to write a poem (there is no 56 word poem, for example) and see if you can fill the gap!
7. Can you tell us about some of the word play you use through these poems?
There are different types of humour, different types of comedy. Sometimes funny is someone falling over on a banana skin. Sometimes funny is someone watching someone falling over on a banana skin, saying, 'What an idiot!' and then turning around, walking off and falling over on a banana skin. And sometimes funny is an unexpected word.
I like all sorts of comedy, but mucking about with words is one of my favourites. There's a three word poem called Apple Appreciation Poem which goes "Cor! (& more.)" And the 'Cor!' there is a play on the bit in the middle of an apple and an exclamation of being-impressed-ness (and then the bit in the brackets is there because the brackets make it feel a bit round, like an apple, and also to remind you there's not just the bit in the middle of the apple (which normally gets thrown away), but the rest of the apple as well. It's a sort of playing with words which you may or may not enjoy. If you don't, that's fine - the poem was only three words long, so it's gone now, no worries!
8. Are all the poems funny?
Most of them are funny, because I think it's often easier to make a joke than to be serious, especially in a little space, but there are a few more thoughtful poems hidden in there too, including some nature poems about my garden and the seasons (which is what I can see from my desk where I'm typing this, and where I write a lot of my poems!).
9. What kinds of poems do you have most fun writing? And what do you most enjoy doing when you're not writing?
I enjoy writing a poem that makes me chuckle. And when I'm not writing I most enjoy going out on stages (or into school halls or classrooms) and performing my poems and making audiences chuckle too.
10. Can you tell us about the two indexes in A Pocket Book of Pocket Poems? How would you use the funny index at the beginning of the book?
Normally at the front of a poetry book is a contents page, which lists all the poems. I didn't want that, (a) because there's a lot of poems so it would take up a lot of space, and (b) because I'd rather people just dipped into the book and found a poem or two just by chance and then dipped around elsewhere.
But my publishers said we had to have one, and so I said, let me make you a thematic index instead. So I went through the poems and noted down all the things that are mentioned in them and sorted those into categories (Animals, Vehicles, Body Parts, and so on) and then added a few things that aren't in the book and there we go, a Thematic Contents Index List Thingie. You want a poem that mentions tigers? Look under Animals (not birds (except snake)), go through the list until you hit tiger, and there are the page numbers for all the poems that have tigers in. Easy!
School events: I do do school visits and all the details, about what it costs and what it involves, are on the School Visits page of www.afharroldkids.com.
Pocket Book of Pocket Poems
