Her first collection, Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe 1988), won a Commonwealth Prize. Her second, Phrase Book (OUP 1992), was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She is co-editor with Matthew Sweeney of Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times, an anthology of contemporary poetry (Faber 1996). Her poems for children, The Creatures Indoors, were set for orchestra by composer Stephen Montague and premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, London, in January. She is the 1997 Penguin Writers Fellow at the British Library and the Poetry Society’s Resident Poet on the Internet.

I’m impressed by Avril Fox’s confident use of regular rhythm and simple rhyme, and by the striking contrast bet-ween her poem’s light touch and the grim future she invites us to imagine. There’s a real sense of betrayal in the fourth verse - “that’s not fair” - and something almost apocalyptic about the vision of a world on which the sun never rises. So many poems on similar themes tend to be overwritten and melodramatically gloomy. This one seems to me to be haunting precisely because of its elegant simplicity. Avril Fox, aged 9, receives Back by Midnight by John Mole (Puffin). Submitted by David Oldham of Newall Green Junior School, Firbank Road, Wythenshawe, Manchester M23 2YH, who receives a set of Poetry Society posters with teachers’ notes. For Poetry Society events, ring 0171 240 2133.

IMAGINE

Imagine no birds in the sky

Not one sound or sigh

Imagine no fish in the stream

No trout or silver bream

Imagine no call from the fox

Or a scuffle from behind the rocks

Imagine no breeze in the air

No trees - that’s not fair

Imagine no sunrise in the morning

When people get up and start yawning

Imagine no flowers on the grass

All we have now is litter and glass

Poem by AVRIL FOX