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As part of our tenth anniversary celebrations for our Speech and Drama section of the RWB Arts Festival, we are welcoming Coral Rumble!

Coral is a popular, award winning poet; in 2018 she won The Caterpillar Poetry Prize. She has worked as a poet and performer for many years, and now specializes in writing and performing for children. She was featured in ‘Favourite Poets’ published by Hodder Children’s Books. Michael Rosen has commented, “Rumble has a dash and delight about her work”.

​Coral has had three collections published – ‘Creatures, Teachers and Family Features’, ‘Breaking the Rules’, and ‘My Teacher’s as Wild as a Bison’. Both of her later collections were featured in the ‘Best Books’ supplement of Junior Education Magazine, and were selected as ‘choices’ by The Children’s Poetry Bookshelf.

​She has contributed to around 150 anthologies for children. You will find her work in various education trade books and, being a football fan, she is very proud that one of her poems was included in a poetry exhibition at the National Football Museum in Preston! In the past she has contributed to the National Poetry Day resources for schools, produced by the Poetry Society, and works with the Poetry Society on other ventures, like the Trafalgar Square tree project, ‘Look North More Often’. Coral is Poetry Editor for the Writers’ Advice Centre in London.

​In addition, Coral has delivered inset training for teachers, both independently, and on behalf of the Poetry Society and British Council, here and abroad, and works regularly on education projects. She enjoys helping children of all ages and abilities, to write poems they can be proud of, and works on the Able Writers scheme, organised by poet Brian Moses and Authors Abroad.

​Coral performs and gives workshops at art centres, museums, bookshops, libraries, theatres and festivals, as well as in schools. She has given workshops in some unusual places, too, the grandest venue being Buckingham Palace!

​Coral contributed many poems to the popular Cbeebies TV programmes, ‘Poetry Pie’ and ‘The Rhyme Rocket’. She is also the writer of the ‘Pinkasaurus’ stories, that have been broadcast on CBeebies Radio.

​More recently, Coral teamed up with her illustrator daughter, Charlotte Cooke. Their picture book, ‘The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat’, was longlisted for the ‘Oscars Book Prize’ award.

​Do come and meet Coral over the Festival weekend, 16th and 17th November 2019!