Click here to access the historic recordings of Michael Rosen as well as a brief biography of this author.

Michael Rosen (b. 1946) says he became a children's poet by accident - "I thought I was being an ironic adult poet but children's literature 'claimed' me". He has since become a very well-known poet, for adults as well as children, and also writes plays; he has worked in television and radio too, in programs from Home Truths to Playschool. He is a winner of the Eleanor Farjeon Award for Children's Literature and the National Literacy WOW Award, has received an honorary doctorate from the Open University, and has been involved in one way or another with more than a hundred books.

His recording was made on 5 April 2005 at The Audio Workshop, London and was produced by John Green. From this page, you can hear the voice of Michael Rosen reading eight of his poems: "Three Limericks," "The News," "Yesterday," "My Friend Elsie," "Riding Down to Boxland," "In The Colonie" (an extract: 34), "The Colonie" (an extract: 38), "In The Colonie" (an extract: 60) and, "The Great Big Hole."

Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.

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