Monday 9 November at 7.30 pm at The Wanstead Tap
Michael Rosen
Don’t Mention the Children
Michael Rosen is one of the best-loved poets and writers for children, and a constant friend and supporter
of Newham Bookshop over many years. His poems for grown-ups are less well known and Don’t Mention the
Children is his first collection since Selected Poems in 2007.
Fans of his children’s books will enjoy the way these new poems combine the silly and the sinister to catch the
surrealism of everyday life, somewhere between Jacques Prévert, Ivor Cutler and Adrian Mitchell. Few poets writing today
can move so effortlessly between childishness and childlike seriousness. But at the heart of the book is a remarkable
series of poems about anti-Semitism, fascism and war, connecting the contemporary world—UKIP, Marine le Pen, Palestine
(the title poem refers to the refusal of the Israeli broadcasting authorities to mention the names of children killed during
the Israeli shelling of Gaza in 2014)—to the lives of Rosen’s parents and grandparents—the General Strike,
the Battle of Cable Street, Vichy and Auschwitz.
The Wanstead Tap is in a railway arch underneath London Overground. The nearest
station is Wanstead Park.
Tickets £5 from Newham Bookshop or The Wanstead Tap
This event is now sold out.
