The Dirigible Balloon
Poetry for Children

Oscar

Listen to Carole reading her poem ...
When I was a girl of eleven or so,
could have been younger I really don’t know,
could have been older, maybe thirteen
before I queued for the seventeen
I’d always go to the pet-food shop
by Paragon Station next to my stop
and pay a shilling for a ticket through
to where the shop-keeper kept a zoo.

In a cage in the corner filled with gloom
was a woolly monkey who hated that room.
It was always the monkey I came to see,
though I doubt he even noticed me,
he’d lean his head against the bars
and I’d reach a finger to stroke his ears.
Little I knew of the land of his birth
but his eyes held every sadness on earth.

About the Writer


Carole Bromley

Carole was born in Middlesbrough in the UK and lives in York. She has had pamphlets and collections published and has also won a number of competitions, including the Bridport, the Yorkshire Open, Torbay, Poetry Space and the Bronte Society Literary Prize. Her poems for children have been published in The Caterpillar, in her collection, Blast Off! and in anthologies from MacMillan and Emma Press. She was the winner of the 2022 Caterpillar Prize. Carole will be tutoring a course on writing poems for children at the Garsdale Retreat in October 2024