We were very excited when a copy of This Is Not A Small Voice arrived at Literacy Tree HQ. It’s a lovingly curated collection of 100 poems by Black writers, for children (and adults) to treasure. Old and emerging voices sit side by side, nestled within a vibrant illustrative colour story created by Jade Orlando. Released in time for National Poetry Day and Black History Month, this collection is a gift to be savoured and returned to throughout the year, far beyond October.

Traci N. Todd, author of several award-winning books, including Nina: A Story of Nina Simone and Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes, is at the centre of the project. Whilst biography is Traci’s medium of choice, she recently took on the task of curating this book of poems for children. Her 20 years of experience as a children’s book editor shine through in the powerful narrative arc of the collection, which takes us on a journey through time and across the African diaspora.

Members of Team Literacy Tree sat down with Traci N. Todd to learn more about the project and her creative process.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

We'd like to start by asking a bit about your creative process. We’d love to hear more about how you curated this anthology. When you commissioned new poems to sit alongside existing ones, was it with a specific theme in mind, or was it more organic than that?

Traci:

I commissioned the poems after all the other poems had been submitted, so I already had a sense of the direction and the feeling and the flow. I had a sense of where the holes were. So, when I went out to the poets who contributed original poems, I specifically said, “here are the themes we have less around.” After that, I left it up to them whether they wanted to choose one of those themes or wanted to do something on their own. And I think most of them wrote around the themes where we needed a little bit more fleshing out - but really, I didn't want to inhibit them in any way. I wanted them to feel free to do whatever it was that they felt moved to do.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

Sticking with the theme of collaboration, the illustrations are beautiful: tender in places, joyful in others. The use of color shade is beautiful. Did you work with Jade Orlando, the illustrator, directly?

Traci:

I didn't, no. Not directly. I received sketches and work in progress along the way to comment on. But ultimately, you know, it was Jade and the designer on the Nosy Crow side who made choices. And I actually had a moment toward the end of it all where I just rearranged a bunch of the poems, because it was very important to me to tell a story from beginning to end, to have some sort of arc.

It caused a bit of a panic, because the colour story had been so very intentionally thought through. For example, I decided to pull this piece that had primarily blues and greens and move it to somewhere that was less visually complimentary for the sake of the narrative, and we had to figure out: how much work does Jade have to do to satisfy or meet the thing that I wanted to do editorially? So there was - especially towards the end - a little bit of a give and take, a little bit of a compromise in terms of what I wanted to do and what Jade was able to do, given the very thoughtful approach that she took to the creation of her work. 

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

That will be so reassuring for children as writers and teachers of writing – to hear that the creative process is messy. There will be things that you do, and you reserve the right to change your mind on these!

Alice, Literacy Tree:

We love that the collection is organised by theme or common threads between poems. As a result, you get poems from very different times and places next to each other, but in conversation with one another, making for such an enjoyable reading experience - where you can dip into any point of the book and be exposed to very different voices, but with something linking them together. What were the challenges of working with so many different poems and voices, and were there any points along the way where you just thought: “What have I taken on.”

Traci:

Well, the team at Nosy Crow was incredibly, incredibly generous with me. They actually approached me about doing this, which is such an honour. And, I have a particular point of view in my work. I'm very honest and forthright and I write for young children, but I don't like to sugarcoat the truth at all. So, I wanted it to be very clear to Nosy Crow that that I would bring that same sensibility to this book. It wouldn't necessarily be a collection of poems about frolicking in the meadow, although there is some of that too!

The very first poem that I thought really exemplified that point of view was Ross Gay's poem A Small Needful Fact. This poem is about the death of a Black man at the hands of the police in the United States. Although, if you don't know this, it's just a beautiful poem about a man who plants with big hands, who plants delicate flowers that create beauty and air for us to breathe. 

And, of course, the poem is about Eric Garner, whose last words were: “I can't breathe.”

While the poem was written for adults, and not children, I thought that it would be accessible on many levels and would have that level of truth that I wanted to include. And so, I was really clear with Nosy Crow about saying this is the kind of poem that I want to include.

Once we had that very much established, I then threw things out there. At the very beginning, I said to my editor: “what about this or what about this?” And they would come back and they would say, “this feels too old”, or “this feels too much like an adult looking back and less like a situation that a child might relate to.”

I always knew Langston Hughes was going to be a major presence in the book. And I thought, what if the whole book is going through a dream and it's bringing in all of the things - not all of the things, but as many as we can imagine - that Black folks dream about and putting them in this protective space with all this lovely art, and also bringing in some intrusions. There are some moments that are a little more difficult and quite honest. And we get there when we talk about Eric Garner. We talk about Black Lives Matter, and we talk about those who are no longer with us, who were part of the struggle and part of the fight. Then we move from that into a new morning. So, we have this little bit of fretfulness, and then we reset the day with poems about morning and go forward.

It was important for me to do exactly what you said - to be able to dip in and dip out, but also to really look at the piece as a whole. And I think that was particularly well served by the fact that the book is being published in both the US and the UK simultaneously, and I had to include poems that reflected both cultural experiences. It just meant that everything was going to be all the richer for it.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

That actually leads us really nicely onto to what I was about to ask about - this idea of not sugarcoating .That's a huge part of what we do at Literacy Tree. We have a lot of books as part of our offer that are challenging and they have got truths within them. 

Reflecting on that line in your introduction around poems being  secrets that reveal themselves over time, I think you’re right for an anthology such as this, because children will be exposed to a poem like the one that you just described and then years later, might have the opportunity to revisit and reflect and reframe. 

So on that subject, we loved the poem Good Trouble. It's just such a delightful poem and it's playful and joyful, but I think at its core there’s this really sad and current message: the idea of banned books. It's about trying to keep people down and keep things quiet because of the power of literature.

Given that we actually have a lot of the books that are on the banned lists, what would your advice be for teachers and parents navigating and brokering certain poems within this anthology?

Traci:

I would say, be curious and brave.

Honestly, I do not understand the banning of books. I mean, I understand it, but it doesn’t make any sense. First of all, just because you remove something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The ideas are still there to be discovered and shared. Books, as vital and essential as they are,  especially for children, aren’t the only way the word is passed. 

Secondly, even a superficial look at history will tell you the good guys don’t ban books, and often, the most powerful art is made in protest.

That is always the sort of tension with my work - I know that this is a business, and I know that there are things to be considered for the sake of sales, but I am not concerned. I just want all children to see the worth and the value and the importance of these poems and poets and be curious enough to explore beyond the pages of this book. I mean, that's really my dream: that this is enough of an appetite whetting to then get children to research the poems and the poets. That was one of the heartbreaking things, not being able to include the biographies of these poets – as someone who writes biographies primarily. I hope that children explore and find all the many other poems by these poets, and then find the poems by the people who they are associated with. I just really hope that this is the beginning of a conversation.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

That’s such a beautiful answer. I think some teachers become anxious about vocabulary or language that we use. And a huge part of the work we do at Literacy Tree is talking with authors like yourself. 

I think a lot of the teachers we work with in our schools are completely with us on facing uncomfortable truths through literature because it's important for children's mental well-being and safety. But they will often ask questions about how to navigate heavy topics of historic language. We would always encourage our teachers to use literature that does challenge them, that means they have to plan to manage conversations really effectively.  Putting something like this out into the world is the whole point. It's about starting a conversation. And what a powerful conversation this anthology is going to start.

Traci:

I hope that's right. But I will say that I did not want to exclude poets who had something to say just because their language was…tricky. I didn't want to include any slurs or anything like that, but language changes over time, and I think there’s a really interesting lesson there too -  not just about poetry, but about how language changes. Why were these words chosen in this poem that was written in 1960 or whatever? So, I hope that the educators will see the opportunities there rather than the concern.

But I know that here teachers are so scrutinised for the things that they bring to the classroom. So I imagine there is some concern there.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

Quite often with resources that we create, we will provide guidance notes for teachers so that teachers will be able to put literature out into a classroom really effectively. And I suppose from a place of safety - which I think is really, really powerful because a lot of teachers worry about getting things wrong. Seeing and doing the wrong thing. 

Alice, Literacy Tree:

Throughout the book, one of the key things I took away was this idea of looking back to look forwards. There are several poems about standing on the shoulders of your forbearers, whether they're people in your personal life (parents, grandparents) or activists and poets. I wanted to ask you about the relationship between past, present and future. And the importance of putting voices from the 20th century next to, and intermingled with, emerging voices.

Traci:

Most of what I write is biography. I am constantly researching the past. I think it's important to recognise that the work being done today comes out of work that has been done in the past, and that a lot of the patterns that we see today, we've already seen - like you were saying about the banning of books and the burning of books and all of this. I think it's important for children to know that Black poetry has a long lineage. I think it's interesting to see when someone who has written in the early 20th century and someone who has written in the 21st century are saying a very similar thing. Cross-culturally, too. I tried to include a number of poets from throughout the diaspora, so not just from the UK and the US, but from South Africa and from several other African and South American countries as well. When you see these poets are raising some of the same concerns, in perhaps different ways, I think there's something powerful about that.

Alice, Literacy Tree:

I love how, alongside the last poem in the book, you have the illustration of the constellations depicting figures like Martin Luther King - but also ancestral figures going much further back in time.  I just thought it was the most perfect poem and page to wrap the collection together.

Traci:

I'm so glad you think so, and I felt very fortunate to find poems about African mythology and gods and characters - some of which I knew growing up and some of which I didn't, or that have different names in different parts of the diaspora.

Alice, Literacy Tree:

Like you said, you have that eagerness to go away and do your own research. But I think that's a really positive thing about the book and not a limitation.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

That's the thing. It feels so satisfyingly complete and cool. I sometimes struggle with poetry anthologies, I've got to be honest, if it's just scattergun and disjointed. It's the storytelling that you get through this, that sort of golden thread of magic, that's just perfect!

Final question - a little bit more of a lighthearted one. Which poem would you choose as a read aloud for children and why?

Traci:

Oh my God, I think it's impossible to choose just one! I would say A Small Needful Fact, just because that's where it started. But also, the poems by Ewing are meant to be read aloud. This Is Not A Small Voice is such a beautiful, beautiful poem that I feel very honoured we were able to include and use as the title of the book. I think so many of the poems are meant to be read aloud, but I also think that some of them are just meant to be savoured on the page.

Alice, Literacy Tree:

There’s just so much rhyme and rhythm in so many of them. And when I was reading it, I remember coming across the page with Checkin’ Out Me History by John Agard. It was in a poetry anthology we studied at secondary school, and I remember the teacher showing us a video of Agard reading the poem, and how transformative this was, when something goes from the page to a performance.

Traci:

I'm so glad that you mention that poem, because to me it felt like such a revelation because it was new to me, and I think it'll be a new and special experience for American audiences. I wish I could have found a sort of answer poem, or a poem in conversation, from an American poet mentioning some of the things that that don't get mentioned about American history. But yes, I really love that poem and feel very fortunate that we were able to include it in here. That poem is something else.

Pippa, Literacy Tree:

Thank you so much, Traci. You have spoken so generously and eloquently, and we cannot wait for our schools to hear about this book.