Sarah Ziman was born and brought up in the South Wales valleys and currently lives in England with her husband, two sons and daft cat. As well as reading and writing, she enjoys boring her children in antique shops, laughing at her own jokes, playing loud music, nature and visiting new places. She is the winner of the YorkMix Poems for Children competition and has been highly commended three times in the Caterpillar Prize. You can find her poems in anthologies, online, and in magazines worldwide. Her debut children’s collection, Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It? was published in September 2024 by Troika Books.
1. What did you like to write and read as a kid?
This could be a very long answer but I’ve tried to keep it brief... I liked to read ANYTHING. including the side of the cereal box if I didn’t have a book, and I genuinely once walked into a lamp-post like some kind of cartoon dork because I was walking down the street whilst reading. (I think I did then realize it maybe wasn’t the best idea!)
An early favorite was the Happy Families series of books by Allan Ahlberg (I’d have been about 5) and I liked them so much I wrote and illustrated my own version about my naughty baby sister. He also wrote the first poetry collection I really liked – the famous Please Mrs Butler. It’s a collection which is still in print and making children laugh now, which is quite an achievement 40 years on.
I think I would have been in year 2 (1st grade) when I finished the reading scheme at primary school; this meant I was allowed to go and choose a book from the older classroom book corners. This was very exciting, and I remember working my way through all the Paddington stories by Michael Bond. A bit later on I went through a pony books stage – reading my mum’s old Jill books by Ruby Ferguson and The Silver Brumby books by Australian author Elyne Mitchell – and also lots of Enid Blyton. I wanted to be good at disguises like the character Fatty in the Five Find-Outers books and quite often appeared adorned in a Halloween wig and my mum’s old 70s clothes from my extensive dressing-up box! The Borrowers was another favourite series – I’m still half convinced my house has them when all my pens and hair bobbles mysteriously disappear...
I also really liked anything with myths, magic or witchcraft, and I got addicted to scaring myself with a great big hardback that belonged to my parents: Reader’s Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain book – full of accounts of headless horsemen and haunted houses!
I liked audio books too – or story cassettes as they were then – I must have listened to The Hobbit hundreds of times as I wore one of the tapes out! An actor called Nicol Williamson did every voice. I can still quote big chunks of it now, and remember all the accents he gave them.
I don’t get quite so carried away these days, but I was forever being inspired by books I’d read – my dad told everyone at my wedding about the time I stuck posters up on my road advertising for my new pet-sitting business – that was definitely a result of something in a story. He answered the phone to a prank caller requesting that we look after their monkey and unfortunately that was the end of that money-making scheme. I’d thought it was a brilliant idea!
2. What was your favorite subject in school?
English and Art were always my favorite subjects. I wish I’d kept up with the drawing as I used to love it and I’m very envious of people who can write and illustrate. But stories were my first love and even when I’m having trouble writing I have no problem reading, so it was a no-brainer that I would do English Literature at A-level and then university.
3. Where do you like to write?
I would LIKE to write in a beautiful old library in front of a roaring fire or in a gorgeous garden room office, however I actually do most of my writing sitting on the sofa in my living room, surrounded by half-drunk cups of coffee and crisp (chip) packets. One day I will have a desk...
4. Does anyone in your family read your books?
I hope they will – or at least dip in and out! That’s the good thing about poetry – you can just read one when you feel like it and there’s no pressure to read the whole collection from start to finish, or in any particular order. I do quite often get them to read a new poem when I’ve just finished it though – just to see if it’s as good/funny as I think!
5. If you had to describe yourself in just three words, what would those be?
I used to use ‘wonky, sparky, occasionally sarky’ as an online description for myself and whilst it’s not the most flattering, it’s probably still true!
6. How do you come up with titles for your books?
Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It? is a line from a poem in the collection – it’s quite a fun way to pick a title and we tried out a few, but this seemed to fit best. I remember poet Roger Stevens saying that if there’s a book title you fancy, you can always write a poem with that line in!
7. Have pets ever gotten in the way of your writing?
Hmm. I’ll let Bonnie answer that:
Cat
My human claims to be a poet.
I see nothing that shows it.
Several times now,
I have attempted to suggest
an ode to moi.
But she refuses to take my hints.
She has so far ignored –
my fluffy yet noble profile,
repeated meowing by the back door
followed by refusal to go out,
and the loving application of claws
in her thigh.
Next time she opens the laptop,
I will just have to type it mysssseegjjkjjkop9mvmmmmmm,lllllll;;;;’///////////
8. Do you prefer ebooks, printed books, or audiobooks most of the time?
I usually have one of each on the go, with the kindle app and Borrow Box on my phone and a real book by my bed. I prefer books as real objects though.
9. What do you do when you feel stuck?
It’s rare that I get stuck once I’m part-way through a poem, although it does happen occasionally. The best thing to do there is just to leave it for as long as possible and then come back with fresh eyes. The whole ‘going for a walk’ thing can help, but the longer the better, really. I’ve returned to abandoned poems after months and found I could finish them straight away. Poetry isn’t quite the same as getting stuck in the middle of a writing a novel where you’ve got a plot problem though – I don’t panic if I don’t write for a week or so, because I’m still getting ideas even if I don’t realize it at the time. Just generally living your life and reading and engaging with art and friends and family will usually trigger something. I have done NaPoWriMo with a group of poet friends for the last couple of years – where you write a poem every day in April – and there are lots of daily prompts to choose from if you need one. It’s quite tiring, but we all cheer each other on, and have all had some great poems come out of it that we wouldn’t otherwise have written.
10. Do you play music while you write — and, if so, what’s your favorite?
I love music and listen to it a lot, but I don’t tend to play it while I’m writing – it gets distracting if I’m trying to work out beats and rhymes and something else is going on! I like everything from techno to grunge to country and I appreciate a good lyricist – for obvious reasons I suppose. I quite like a song that tells a story, like The Borders by Sam Fender or The Last Great American Dynasty by Taylor Swift. I can definitely appreciate the skill of some rappers too – they play with words just like poets do.
11. Do you carry around a journal to note inspiration?
I do have one if I have a bag with me, but in reality, I’m more likely to jot something down in the Notes app on my phone. I sometimes wake up in the night with what I think is a brilliant idea, scribble it down and then discover complete gibberish in the morning! Very occasionally there’s something that makes sense, though.
I mostly write straight into a Word document on my laptop and do the much-frowned on thing of editing as I go along. It works for me though!
12. Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know (yet)?
I talk a little bit about this in the introduction to Brain, but I have aphantasia – which means I can’t see images in my mind when I think. It seems to confuse people quite a lot that a) I love reading when I can’t create pictures to go with it, and b) that I have an imagination at all! I think the main problem it causes me is a terrible sense of direction!
Sarah, thank you for your lovely interview and congratulations on your debut children's collection! Please follow Sarah on social media and find her wonderful collection, Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It?, in our Bookshop! Keep shining!
Website: www.sarahziman.co.uk
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BardyMum
IG/Threads: https://www.instagram.com/sarahziman/?hl=en
Comments