John Agard reads his poem Half Caste and talks about race – children's books podcast
It was a mega treat to have John Agard in the Guardian podcast studios to read his poem Half Caste as part of our Diversity Week celebrations. In this podcast John talks about how touched he is by the way Half Caste (which has been on the GCSE syllabus for many years) has provoked teachers and young people from all walks of life to think about the inter-racial connections between human beings.
John also reads his slightly scary poem Rumplestiltskin, a character he always felt sorry for when he was a boy reading fairy tales. Maybe it's because one of the traumatic realities of slavery was that you lost your name. Listen to a real poetry grand master and national treasure, the very wonderful John Agard.
Congratulations to John for having two books in the Diverse Voices 50 best culturally diverse books: Half Caste and other Poems and Under the Moon and Over the Sea.
John Agard won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012 and his latest book is Book, narrated by a "book" from the earliest of times (before books even existed) to an e-Book.
