Michael Rosen has been, for many years, a prodigious and prolific user of Twitter (now known as 'Eggs'). Unlike the armies of ‘anonymous tweeters / raging in the twilight’, his Tweets are variously fables, squibs, musings, daily observations and lifelong preoccupations – pitted prunes, anteaters, Sisyphus, the sound of rain stopping, garlic pickle, blocked sinks, lost suitcases, legs, hummus and bagels, Sats tests, Runcorn, grief, saggy jumpers, chicken soup, Eurovision, COVID, labyrinthitis, kookaburras, fringe-magnets, cucumber raita, sneezing, shamans, raisins, armpit scratching, Rishi Sunak’s maths, pest-control, Dominic Raab and Franz Kafka, skip-wrestling, the after-life, the icing on the cake, antisemitism, Gaza…
Pebbles is a collection of some of Michael Rosen’s most recent poetry-tweets. Sharp, pithy and eloquent, serious and comical, wise and perplexed, these are the everyday reports of an ‘optimistic nihilist' –someone who doesn’t believe there is any point to existence, but thinks that this is a good reason to make the most of this life while we can.
About the Author :
Michael Rosen was born in North London in 1946. After university he worked for the BBC on Play School and Schools TV. He has written and edited over 200 books, including Mind Your Own Business, Wouldn’t You Like to Know, Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy, You Tell Me, No Breathing in Class and Quick Let’s Get Out of Here. You Can’t Catch Me! won the Signal Poetry Award. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, won the Smarties Prize. He currently presents Radio Four’s long-running Word of Mouth. Recent books for grown-ups include The Disappearance of Emile Zola, The Author, Workers’ Tales, Reading and Rebellion and So They Call You Pisher! and three Smokestack collections – Don’t Mention the Children, Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio and Mr Mensh. He was Children’s Laureate from 2007-9 and is Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmith’s, University of London.
