Congratulations to Rachel Rooney on winning the CLPE Poetry Award 2012 with The Language of Cat, published by Janetta Otter-Barry Books at Frances Lincoln Children’s Books!

Rachel joins a group of highly regarded previous winners including Carol Ann Duffy, Jackie Kay, Roger Mc Gough, John Agard and Philip Gross. The Language of Cats is Rachel’s first book of collected poems.

Awarding the prize, the judges said:

These poems have a subtle, distinctive speaking voice, lighting up shifts of thought and feeling that young readers will recognise but that clichés would conceal. Rachel Rooney relishes and shares the craft of poetry; gradually you spot exacting games of form and language beneath a surface that seems simple enough for youngest readers to approach, and the poems will grow in the reader’s mind with re-reading, year by year.

UK Poet Laureate and CLPE Poetry Award 2010 winner, Carol Ann Duffy said of The Language of Cat:

Rachel Rooney’s poetry collection for children is a well-crafted, stimulating and un-patronising box of delights, always accessible and constantly inventive.

The CLPE Poetry Award for a book of poetry for children was launched by the Centre for Literacy in Primry Education in 2003 to highlight an important branch of children’s literature and ensure that it receives proper recognition.

Click here for more information about the CLPE Poetry Award, including shortlisted titles for the 2012 award.