Saturdays at the Imaginarium

Shauna Darling Robertson grew up in Northumberland and now lives in Somerset. She's had lots of different jobs over the years - librarian, chef, web editor, charity trustee, travel agent and more. Her poems for adults and children are widely published in journals and anthologies. They've also been performed by actors, displayed on buses, used as song lyrics, turned into short films and repurposed as comic art. Jude Wisdom studied visual communication at Corsham Art Colleage, where everyone rode around on bikes in rural bliss. After that, she rather alarmingly had to enter the real world, where she illustrated for such magazines as Happer's and Queen, Tatler, Time Out, and Just Seventeen. As she was once a child she decided to try her hand at writing and illustrating children's books, namely Whatever Wanda Wanted, Miss Chicken and the Hungry Neighbour, Billy Jupiter and Go to Bed Doodlehead, which she illustrated for Ian Whybrow. She has also collaborated with the poet Susan Boyle, illustrating her sonnets Letters from Mexico. Jude lives in Bath in a lovely house with her charming husband and daughter and draws her inspiration from time spent in the Waterstones cafe, the place she says, where her creative ideas come to life and she sketches in her precious notebooks while meeting lots of new people and talking to the booksellers.

"After a busy week when Father has been immersed in the news, Mum overburdened by housework, kid sister ‘menaces the mirror ’and brother is ‘bug-eyed with screen time’, it is the weekend. It is time to let the mind loose in the Imaginaruim so that ‘come Sunday/absolutely anything/could happen’. Welcome to Shauna Darling Robertson’s Imaginarium where she will introduce you to ideas, questions, possibilities that should not be... In other words she will excite your imagination exploring the ordinary so that it becomes extraordinary, playing with words, looking at the world sideways. She will introduce you to her ‘straight-talking ’grandmother – and what does that mean? To Wild Child who says ‘No ’to restrictions. She will challenge you to become a Poetry Guerilla, spreading ballads, haikus, triolets or to think what it might have been like before the birds took flight and then wonder what if... This is a collection to dip into and have the imagination fired up, tickled into life, curiosity roused to ask those questions that hover at the edge of the mind as one looks at the sky or hears a casual catch-phrase. These poems are fun – and yet offer serious thoughts. Imagine if… she says in the opening poem, and we are faced with seeing the strangeness, the absurdity of the real. Accompanying her words are the illustrations by Jude Wisdom. Nothing twee or poetical here. Her contemporary vision perfectly captures the strangeness of the imagination as well as the humour within the poems. There are gems to be discovered here. This is Shauna Darling Robertson’s first collection for a younger audience. We look forward to more.2