So They Call You Pisher!: A Memoir

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He visits schools with this one-man show to enthuse children with his passion for books and poetry. In 2007, Rosen was appointed Children’s Laureate, a role which he held until 2009. While Laureate, he set up the Roald Dahl Funny Prize. Ideas to change the world. Marxism 2010". Socialist Workers Party. Archived from the original on 18 April 2016 . Retrieved 7 February 2010. Rosen has been involved in campaigning around issues of education and for the Palestinian cause. In August 2010 Rosen contributed to an eBook collection of political poems entitled Emergency Verse - Poetry in Defence of the Welfare State edited by Alan Morrison. He has written columns for the Socialist Worker newspaper and spoken at conferences organised by the Socialist Workers Party, but has never been a party member. He stood for election in June 2004 in London as a Respect Coalition candidate. He is a supporter of the Republic campaign. Our Supporters". Republic.org. Archived from the original on 31 May 2009 . Retrieved 27 November 2012.

RCN awards Honorary Fellowship to Michael Rosen following powerful speech at Congress | News | Royal College of Nursing". 9 June 2022. Archived from the original on 9 November 2022 . Retrieved 13 June 2022. Anderson, Porter (28 June 2023). "In London, the PEN Pinter Prize Goes to Michael Rosen". Publishing Perspectives . Retrieved 2 July 2023. Sprenger, Richard (10 April 2014). "We're Going on a Bear Hunt: 'The editors were so excited they were nearly weeping' – video". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 December 2016 . Retrieved 25 December 2016. In another chapter, he recalls a bag of letters written in Polish by two relatives to their teenage son during the Second World War, letters that come to a sudden, horrible end when the ghetto in which they were being written was “liquidated” by the Nazis. Rosen has the letters translated into English; an act of remembrance and a way to regain control of the narrative. “It felt good to do this,” he says. UWE Bristol: News". Info.uwe.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 30 January 2013 . Retrieved 27 November 2012.

Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Rosen looks at the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after – even during – the darkest times.

The 74-year-old writer is very much alive on Zoom where, after a few technical hitches, he appears on screen seemingly as energetic as ever, his conversation an engaging ragbag of rants and anecdotes, ranging from King Lear to last night’s football match, even if names escape him occasionally. In real life, as has often been remarked, Rosen resembles the BFG, or at least Quentin Blake’s giant, all long limbs, extravagant ears and messy lines. “You’d have to ask Quentin. He’s never said: ‘By the way you are the BFG’,” he says of the illustrator with whom he has collaborated since 1974. “I think he was partly inspired by Dahl himself.” Creamer, Ella (28 June 2023). "Author Michael Rosen wins 2023 PEN Pinter prize for 'fearless' body of work". The Guardian. When I ask Rosen if he would have written this book had he not almost lost his life to Covid, he says, “Probably not. No.” Becoming perilously unwell – “poorly,” as the doctors described it, as though he had a mild cold – has brought to the surface several other troubling periods in his life. “Freud’s got a word for it,” he says. “What does he call it – condensation? When one thing happens and you pour into it all your feelings from other places?” As Rosen was feeling “sad about being ill and being feeble it sort of drew in, like a vacuum cleaner, all this other stuff.”

An old friend asked him if he sees the world differently now. “The answer is yes, but I’m not quite sure how.” The most profound change is an increased sense of vulnerability; as he describes it in one of the collection’s earliest poems, he has gone from being “a certain person” to an awareness that “Now everything’s not certain”.

In Getting Better, Rosen describes the moment he discovered a photograph of a baby boy sitting on his mother’s knee. When he asked his father who the boy was, Rosen or his older brother, Brian, his father said neither – that it was a third son, Alan, who had died as an infant, before Rosen was born. Rosen was 10 at the time. Nobody in his family had spoken of Alan previously, there were no photographs of him in the house. And though Rosen’s father, Harold, mentioned Alan from time to time over the course of his life, Rosen never spoke about him with his mother, Connie. Neale, Matthew (16 November 2019). "Exclusive: New letter supporting Jeremy Corbyn signed by Roger Waters, Robert Del Naja and more". NME. Archived from the original on 26 November 2019 . Retrieved 27 November 2019.

Awards and honours

Rosen, Michael (4 March 2006). "What's a story for?". Socialist Worker (1990). Archived from the original on 21 March 2006. Kellaway, Kate (27 October 2002). "The children's poet who grew up: Michael Rosen talks about lone parenting, his new baby daughter – and the day his son died". The Observer. London. Archived from the original on 14 December 2013 . Retrieved 17 July 2010.