Walking on Air
Walking on Air is my collection of poems for children, written over several years and published in countless anthologies. They are favourites in schools and for public recitations.
Available from Amazon.
Published by: CreateSpace. ISBN 9781500252892. Available exclusively from Amazon. (Originally published in 1993 by HarperCollins and in 1999 by Hodder.)
You can hear my readings of six of the poems in Walking on Air in the Children’s Poetry Archive by following this link.
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- The contents of ‘Walking on Air’
- How poetry inspired me as a child
- How to encourage children to write poetry
- My poem ‘Playgrounds’, from ‘Walking on Air’
- My poem ‘Quieter Than Snow’, from ‘Walking on Air’
- Poems about family, including ‘My Sparrow Gran’
- ‘Four Haiku’ from ‘Walking on Air’
- My poem ‘If You Were a Carrot’ set to music
- Walk on Air
- If you enjoyed reading ‘Walking on Air’…
Doherty’s use of language in Walking on Air conjures up pictures of childhood and childhood memories. With a sure hand she crafts lyrical and thought provoking poems as well as entertaining poems. There are riddles, haiku, kennings; there are poems about skirts that are too tight, learning to ride a bike, mythological creatures and dark caves. The poems both celebrate life and capture life experience.
Helen Taylor, Books for Keeps
The contents of ‘Walking on Air’
Walking on Air contains poems that have been commissioned and anthologised by many poets and publishers throughout the years, and I’m very grateful to all of them for giving me the opportunity to write about what I see and feel in a way that will reach out to children. Some of the poems are about family life and are observations of different members of the family, others about school and friendship, teachers, playgrounds. There are animals and ghosts, mysteries and adventures, riddle poems and haiku, sad and funny poems. Many of the poems have been selected by schools and examining boards for comprehension or recitation, and again I’m grateful for this. Poetry is meant to be read out loud!
‘Walking on Air’ contents
Quieter than Snow • Fishes are Stars • Astronaut • Hymn to Miss Plowden • Ghost in the Garden • The Wild White Horses • Grandpa • My Sparrow Gran • Dad • Wizard and Witch • Playgrounds • Circus School • Horace • The Magical Bicycle • I’m Telling You • Daydreams • Season Sketch • I Hear • Bakewell Market • Snow Spell • Badger • ’copter • Frogs • Iguana in my Old Armchair • Two Young Weasels • Pegasus • Hob-Goblin • Guess • The Fox and the Egg • Six Black Hens • Guess 2 • Thank You Letter • An African Child’s Song • Zanzibar • If You were a Carrot • Three or so • Riddle • Mushrooms • This River Morning • Feed the Plants • The True Tale of the Captain’s Cat • I’m Frightened in Dark Caves • First Leap • When I was a Child • Race • Riddles • Dodos are like Dinosaurs • Snake • Kieran • The Upside-down Poem • Locked • Remember • Swimmers • That Stormy Night • Night Sounds • Trees • Four Haiku • Paving-stone Poem • Lord Muck • The Drowned Village • The Boggart • Torch
How poetry inspired me as a child
I used to have a notebook which I carried everywhere with me, and I was always scribbling things in it, observations, words that I liked the sound of, private thoughts. I wrote poems on the bus, in bed, down by the beach, anywhere. Sometimes I showed them to people and sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I sent them to the Liverpool Echo to be published on the Children’s page.
This habit, the habit of trying to express myself in words, has never left me. Even when I’m walking with other people I’m looking at things around me, thinking of words to describe what I see, in the way a photographer or painter will always be looking at angles and colours, light and shade, composition.
Berlie’s first (& only I think) collection of poetry looks at childhood. Some classic first lines ‘Playgrounds are such gobby places’, ‘I went to school a day too soon.’ ‘Fishes are stars’. These are lines that intrigue and the poems that follow are wonderful observations. No filler here! A gem of a book.
Brian Moses, Poetry Roundabout
How to encourage children to write poetry
It’s rare, and it’s unmistakeable. Sometimes there’s a long struggle afterwards to try and get the music of the line just right, to use the best possible way of describing, to go right to the middle of the idea and make sure that you find a way of saying what you really want to say.
Children love writing poetry. They just get it. Let them, let their language and ideas flow, but always make sure that they value what they’ve written. Encourage them to read it out loud. Here I am reading out some of my poems. I hope you enjoy them.
Walking on Air contains poems that have been commissioned and anthologised by many poets and publishers throughout the years, and I’m very grateful to all of them for giving me the opportunity to write about what I see and feel in a way that will reach out to children. Many of the poems have been selected by schools and examining boards for comprehension or recitation, and again I’m grateful for this.
My poem ‘Playgrounds’, from ‘Walking on Air’
This video is embedded from YouTube, and will only be loaded if you click the ‘play’ button, from which point Google’s privacy policy will apply. See my own privacy policy for more details.
Playgrounds is often anthologised. It tells of my experience, and maybe yours:
I’m pleased when children tell me that they’ve enjoyed particular poems. It’s not always easy to say why a poem works for one individual and not for another, or how poetry works at all, but when I teach poetry writing to children I always say “Listen to the music of the line. Let the words sing!”
My poem ‘Quieter Than Snow’, from ‘Walking on Air’
This video is embedded from YouTube, and will only be loaded if you click the ‘play’ button, from which point Google’s privacy policy will apply. See my own privacy policy for more details.
Walking on Air = Children on the edge of the playground. People who can’t join in. Shadowy figures who are barely there. These are the voices that get to speak in many of Berlie Doherty’s poems.
Berlie clearly remembers what it is like to be young, and she explores what it is like to be growing up in a world that can feel strange or confusing at times.
Darkness or mystery often lies beneath the surface. Listen to ‘Quieter than Snow’. Although she reads with quite a gentle voice, you can hear the sense of unease build through the poem.
Many of Berlie’s poems do not have regular stanzas or patterns of rhyme. But if you hear or read them aloud, you can hear how the words chime with each other, using assonance, consonance and half rhyme.
Children’s Poetry Archive
Poems about family, including ‘My Sparrow Gran’
In Walking on Air I’ve sometimes written about family members. You can find poems about Dad, Granddad, Mum and one of my daughters. Here’s one about my children’s grandmother. Have a listen to it, and see if the words I’ve used give you a picture of the kind of person she was.
This video is embedded from YouTube, and will only be loaded if you click the ‘play’ button, from which point Google’s privacy policy will apply. See my own privacy policy for more details.
You could write about a family member. Do any of them remind you of any kind of animal? A bear, a cat, a puppy, a fish?
Use lots of describing words to show how like that creature they are.
I did another reading of My Sparrow Gran, when I was …erm …a bit younger! It’s on the BBC’s website. You’ll see lots of photos of the real Gran (Nana) there. Her name was Winnie Doherty, but we often called her Small One.
‘Four Haiku’ from ‘Walking on Air’
This video is embedded from YouTube, and will only be loaded if you click the ‘play’ button, from which point Google’s privacy policy will apply. See my own privacy policy for more details.
In one of my blog posts I show you all about writing haikus. The post also includes lots of interesting background information and some examples of Japanese haiku.
My poem ‘If You Were a Carrot’ set to music
Teacher Miriam Jellinek has set my poem If You Were a Carrot to music, and is very happy for me to share it with you.
Walk on Air
Seamus Heaney was one of the most famous, most lyrical poets in the world. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995, and was one of my favourite poets ever. He wrote about nature, often about the simple lives of people he knew, celebrating the fullness of their lives and their connection to the land. Sadly, he died in 2013.
Imagine my surprise when I saw this epitaph on his headstone:
Walk on Air Against your Better Judgement.
Of course this epitaph and my simple book of poems have nothing to do with each other, and the fact that my title Walking on Air resembles the words Walk on Air is mere chance. My collection was first published in 1993, he died 20 years later. But it really pleases me to imagine that somehow our thoughts met, and that the words of a very great poet are echoed in my title.
It was happy chance, Serendipity. As he said “If you have the words, there’s always the chance that you’ll find the way.”
You’ll find information about my pavement poem, Riddle Trail, and an anthology of ballads and story poems on my Poems page.
You can find a useful worksheet by user Zalena on the TES website or via Google Drive.
Just because poems are short doesn’t mean they’re easy to write! If you can stretch it out to look like prose then it probably isn’t really a poem at all!
And yet a poem can be about almost anything at all – your pet, a football crowd, something you’ve lost, something you’ve found.
In a good poem, every word matters. Don’t rhyme it for the sake of rhyming it – a bad rhyme spoils the whole poem.
In your poetry notebook, write down words or phrases about, say a horse. Just write a free flow of words – think of the energy, the size, the movements, the eyes, the teeth, the swishing tail, the tossing head, the sound it makes, your feelings about the horse… a poem is beginning to come now. Choose the words and phrases that are beginning to work for you, as if you were drawing the horse. What are you actually trying to tell me about this horse in particular? Love (or hate, or fear) the horseness of this horse.
Make the words shine. Listen to the music of each line.