A Pink Balloon
Tomorrow is Remembrance Day. Today this photo popped up as a memory on my phone from 2 years ago.
Sometimes poems start as small, everyday things. The poem The Balloon, in Poems on Toast, is one such poem. The pink balloon in the poem was a real balloon, spotted on the school run, which sparked an idea. The kind of idea that won't leave you alone as you walk home; an idea that MUST be written down as soon as you're through the door.
The Balloon was first published in The Toy magazine TOYS edition (thank you Sue Lancaster) and now has a home in my latest collection. Emily Ford's illustration for this poem is one of my favourites from the book and made me well up when I first saw it. So simple, so powerful.
My youngest son (it was him I was walking to school) is devouring Michael Morpurgo's wartime fiction at the moment. I think I'll share this poem with him again when we read this evening and see where it takes us.
That little pink balloon was so much more than a balloon.
Keep your eyes open.
Set your imagination free.
Write.
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