Soft and silky roses Tulips, poppies and carnations Metallic red tomato juice Blood makes my skin pink Steaming red hot lava As red as the devil himself Devil horns . . . hot, hot, HOT.

Bashful or angry, MY face is red!

PETER STYLER

I’ve often noticed, in poetry by very young children, how disturbing ideas and feelings find a safe expression through images, often vivid ones. Sometimes the best poetry by adults also begins like this, in the struggle to say things which are painful or difficult, capturing the danger in music, patterns and images demanded by poetry. In this week’s example, Peter Styler of Tenacres First School in Redditch, the colour red creeps into the writer’s life and eventually under his skin, where the “red” emotions of anger and embarrassment are played out in as good a description of these feelings as I can remember.