| “ | Noice | ” |
―Michael Rosen, "Hot Food" | ||
Michael Wayne Rosen (born: May 7, 1946), is an English poet, writer, and YouTuber known for his poems and is the target of YouTube Poops. He has been a TV presenter and a political columnist.
History[]
Rosen first used the artificedesign channel when he uploaded a video, "We're going on a Bear Hunt". He proceeded to use it when nobody was willing to keep his book The Hypnotiser in print, so his son, Joe Rosen(born: November 3, 1976) filmed him narrating each poem in an outdoor studio. These poems included favorites such as, "The Outing" (RIGHT, Class 6!) "Hot Food" (Noice), and "The Michael Rosen Rap".
Three years later, he re-entered YouTube by uploading videos of him narrating poems from his new book, Chocolate Cake. Four years after that, Michael continued uploading videos of poems and stories, and he has been doing so ever since.
YouTube Poops[]
Because of Rosen's strange actions in his videos and large dictionary of words, Rosen's videos have been targets of Youtube Poopers for years. Some notable ones include 256PiAlternate, NoiceDrinkz, and cs188. At first, Michael tried to take them down, but there were too many and eventually, he accepted their existence. Due to his acceptance and perhaps due to his social activism, Rosen earned the respect of the YouTube Poop community.
| “ | Please be wary of any other videos that are offered by different channels and users as it unlikely that they will be authentic or approved. YouTube is a 'free-for-all' site. Quite a few people have fun taking Michael's videos and making new versions of them, known as 'poops' or 'YTPs'. Many of these are not suitable for young children.
If you want to be sure that you're looking at genuine Michael Rosen videos then only view content uploaded and managed by this channel. |
” |
―Parts of the channel's description | ||
Early life[]
Michael Wayne Rosen was born into a Jewish family in Harrow, Middlesex, with roots in what is now Poland, Russia, and Romania and connections to the Arbeter Ring and the Bund. Rosen's middle name is in honor of Wayne C. Booth, who was billeted with his father at the US army university in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, and became a literary critic, writing a "seminal" book about the modern novel, The Rhetoric of Fiction.
His father Harold (1919–2008) was born in Brockton, Massachusetts, but grew up in the East End of London from the age of two, when his mother left Harold's father and returned to Britain. He attended Davenant Foundation School and then Regent Street Polytechnic. Harold was a secondary school teacher before becoming a professor of English at the Institute of Education in London, and published extensively, especially on the teaching of English to children.
His mother was Connie (née Isakofsky) Rosen (1920-1976). She attended Central Foundation Girls' School, then in Spital Square, where she made friends such as Bertha Sokoloff, who went on to lead a significant rent strike. Connie worked as a secretary at the Daily Worker, and later as a primary school teacher and then a training college lecturer. Both members of the Young Communist League, Harold and Connie met in 1935, aged 15. They participated in the Battle of Cable Street together. As a young couple, they settled in Pinner, Middlesex. They eventually left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1957. Michael never joined, but this background influenced his childhood, for example, his father's acquaintance (through his mother) with the bohemian literary figure Beatrice Hastings made an impression on him as a child.
At around the age of 11, Michael Rosen began attending Harrow Weald County Grammar School.
Rosen attended state schools in Pinner and Harrow and Watford Grammar School for Boys. Having discovered the range of Jonathan Miller, he thought "wouldn't it be wonderful to know all about science, and know all about art, and be funny and urbane and all that". His mother was by this time working for the BBC. Producing a program featuring poetry, she persuaded her son to write for it and used some of the material he submitted. Subsequently, in his own words:
| “ | I went to Middlesex Hospital Medical School, started on the first part of a medical training, jacked it in and went on to do a degree in English at Oxford University. I then worked for the BBC until they chucked me out and I have been a freelance writer, broadcaster, lecturer, performer ever since – that's to say since 1972. Most of my books have been for children, but that's not how I started out. Sometime around the age of twelve and thirteen I began to get a sense that I liked writing, liked trying out different kinds of writing, I tried writing satirical poems about people I knew. | ” |
―Michael Rosen | ||
Personal life[]
Rosen has been married three times, is the father of five children, and has two stepchildren. Eddie (1980–1999), his second son, died at the age of 18 from meningitis, and his death was the inspiration for Michael Rosen's Sad Book published in 2004. Rosen lives in North London with his third wife, Emma-Louise Williams, and their two children.
At the end of March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rosen almost died and was in intensive care in a hospital with suspected COVID-19. He has since recovered.
Trivia[]
- He accidentally created the "noice" meme in a video called "Hot Food".
- In December 2024, he wrote a poem about Palestinians being massacred by Israel's military.[1]