Rachel Conrad, Time for childhoods: Young Poets and Questions of Agency

In Time for Childhoods: Young Poets and Questions of Agency, Conrad encourages us to engage seriously with poems written by young people, to admit poetry written by young poets into literary canons, to provide access for young poets to be published and heard, and to acknowledge their agency. Conrad turns our attention to the literary merit of poetry written by young people, presenting a collection of youth-written poems for the reader to explore under her expert guidance and compelling commentary. The book's premise is that poetry written by children is not typically regarded as literature in its own right: the poems are viewed as homework practice rather than art, or the outputs of adult teaching rather than childhood creativity. Conrad argues that cultural biases mean young people are considered intellectually and artistically immature and that the works of young poets are too often ignored or dismissed as juvenilia. She contests this idea throughout, engaging in close readings of youth-written poems from adult-facilitated projects to demonstrate their literary value.