IF you're one of Telecom Eireann's 900,000 residential customers you can expect to receive a poem - a TelePoem written by a child aged between four and thirteen years - with your phonebill during March and April.

TelePoems is the name of the biggest children's poetry project to be held in Ireland. Some 44,000 children have contributed poems to the project. "We are absolutely delighted with the outstanding response to TelePoems. The number of children who participated demonstrates that poetry is really alive amongst children in Ireland," says Gerry O'Sullivan, Telecom's head of corporate relations.

The best loo poems have been [selected by a panel of experts headed by Martin Drury, who is director of the children's cultural centre, the Ark in Dublin's Temple Bar. Telecom is randomly distributing 9,000 copies of each of these 100 poems.

"The unique element of the project is the way we are publishing the poems," says Martin Drury. "By sending the poems out randomly to Telecom's customers we are mirroring the energy and brio of the children's use of language." Among the poems there are many that are "really delightful and surprising", he says. "The quality comes shining through."

Poems about nature, animals, pets and family relationships feature strongly in the 44,000 poems. However, the poems of the older children show a greater sense of the outside world. "That's what you would expect," says Drury. "That's how children develop."

Telecom Eireann is a founding patron of the Ark, which is Europe's first purpose-built arts centre for children. "It gives us great pleasure to celebrate children's poetic imaginations in the best possible way, by making the fruits of those imaginations it available to 900,000 of Telecom Eireann's residential customers," says Telecom's chief executive, Alfie Kane.

TelePoems '97 is included in the children's festival of poetry - The Poetry Season - which runs at the Ark in until March 13th.