Roger Stevens

We held a hold-your-breath contest
Me, Sammy, Sean and Sid
Sid held his breath for a fortnight
We're going to miss that kid

From The Monster That Ate the Universe by Roger Stevens

“Hi, fellow poets. I always wanted to become a writer but I had to write lots of stories and poems before my first book, The Howen, was published. After that I wrote Creeper, a scary story about two children, a dog and a boatload of monkeys and their adventures on the marsh. Since then I've had lots of poems published in all sorts of poetry books.

I live near a village called Northiam in the South of England. I play in a band and visit schools to read and talk about my poems and stories. My hobbies are collecting different varieties of moss and juggling windmills. I also collect door numbers. So far I have over 348 number s in my collection. Soon I'm going to start collecting doors.

Watch out for my anthology Taking My Human For a Walk published by Macmillan Children's Books. All the poems in it were written by poet's pets. Some of the poems were difficult to read when they arrived at my office, especially if they were written by paw. And did you know - Gerbils are really poor at spelling. But I managed to sort them out, tidy them up and put them in the book.”