It is now one year since I wrote a blog entry about the possibility of setting up a poetry bank to help plug a publication gap for poets who write for children.
In August 2021, there followed an announcement through an article in the Yorkshire Times that the inaugural launch of The Dirigible Balloon (the DB) was taking place with poems from a dozen wonderful poets (the original Dirigible crew), free-to-view, on a site safe for a young audience and clear of distracting pop-up advertisements.
Since that time, the number of poets has gone beyond 150 and the number of poems (all high quality, entertaining and thought-provoking stuff) is well over 500, many of which are supported with audio readings. We have also included artist and poet features to inform our young readers, promote poetry and encourage creativity among children who have accessed the Balloon’s bank of wonderfulness. The DB has flown each month (ten issues to press) and has been joined in recent times by a number of other new exciting poetry magazines for children, significantly increasing the options for writers.
A celebratory flight of poems is being organised for August 2022 on a Round the World theme featuring work from many of the DB’s global poets. Our literacy and creativity aims have been promoted and shared through regular performances of poems on Mr Dilly Meets, an entertaining and educational Youtube channel for schools, and the Dirigible Balloon now regularly receives over 30,000 views a month.
With this background to the DB’s creation and development, and its aims of promoting poetry for children, it is very exciting to announce our latest venture.
The original plan was to be a non-commercial, digital platform, but as the months passed and the bank of poems grew, several DB poets mooted the idea of an anthology. The quality and quantity of work on the site would certainly support such a project, but it was important that the venture stayed close to the Balloon’s original aims and so a children’s literacy charity was identified as the possible recipient of funds generated from publication.
Finding a publisher on the same wavelength became the next priority (easier said than done) and after going down a few blind alleys, the answer revealed itself with a solution very close to home. The Yorkshire Times group which had supported the Dirigible Balloon right from the beginning, stepped forward and offered its expertise in helping get the anthology off the ground with the very same aims that underpinned the launch of the site in the first place.
The National Literacy Trust has been contacted and informed of the venture. It has registered its interest in the idea and requested it be kept updated. The extensive collection of poems on the Dirigible Balloon has been re-read and work has been identified for possible inclusion in the anthology. Most of the poets who created these poems have been e-mailed and their permission sought for the inclusion of their work (with the charitable aims of publication explained in the communication).
As I write this, the proposed anthology is approaching seventy poems (a target of eighty feels like a jolly good number to reach), an illustrator has been arranged and the response from the poets to the project (an excellent mix of established and new creatives, which includes a fair smattering of national poetic treasures) has been 100% positive.
As editor of the Dirigible Balloon, I couldn’t be happier, working on the order of poems and the overall appearance of the book with the ever-helpful guys at the Yorkshire Times.
I can’t wait to release the title of the anthology and the names of the contributors to the book, once all involved have been contacted and further progress has been made in its development.
Onward and upward! Watch this space!
JH (Balloon Central)
Jonathan Humble 