Poetry for children

Alan Tucker

, What the child sees out of the window is an alien planet, a moonscape. It is planet earth — a dump. Some are born at home wherever they are, but many are not: the days become boring, there doesn't seem any point in doing anything. All the arts and sciences are essentially filling in the landscape, making it meaningful. Liking things isn't enough even — we need to know about them in order to justify to ourselves the time spent in their company. If we like country walks, we learn botany. If we like trains, we start collecting engine numbers. What many children really long for is the big day, the overwhelming experience. Children's novels tend to be about that kind of excitement. It seems to me that poetry is quite different. It is about the piecing together of a pattern of many different interests. If at times it achieves great moments, they are not disasters, tragedies, or violence, but rather insights — which spring from the accumulation of details of understanding, and are as personal as the moment of satisfaction when the last piece of a jigsaw drops neatly into place. Whatever its origins, poetry is a civilized and rather gentle art. I suspect it is now the only kind of writing which can convince children that the ordinary is more interesting than the fabulous, that a field is a more interesting place than Narnia.

Children lose themselves in novels. The idea is that they find themselves in poetry.

Of our few totally convincing poets writing for children, the two most entertaining (and most popular with children), Charles Causley and Spike Milligan, have in common their attention to form and their humour. Causley's The Tail of the Trinosaur (Brockhampton £1.25) is a splendidly inventive long comic narrative poem, well illustrated, and quite exceptionally carefully designed and produced. It bowls along joyously, easy to read, with just that twist to the line every now and then that marks the difference between a poet and a versifier in this kind of writing. What has there been in this class since The Pied Piper of Hamelin? Children will find themselves able to read a poem as long as a whole book, and apart from the enjoyment, will be delighted with their own achievement. What would be a wonderful sight to see would be a long poem from Causley, readable by children, about a human character. He has the genius and the craftsmanship. His "Ballad of the Bread Man" comes in an adult collection, Underneath the Water, by the way, and shouldn't be missed.

All that needs to be said about Spike Milligan is that his poems are unforgettable. To be sure it's all rubbish, but it's real solid beautiful British junk, just like most of the objects littered around most of the lives of the children in the country. Obviously, he copies from Lear. Less obviously, he is successful for the same reason: the combination of indestructible form and very real, rather vulnerable emotion. Compared with him, most of the other original poets published recently are shaping empty air. The American comic poets, however, keep one foot on the ground. Ogden Nash's The Cruise of the Aardvark (Deutsch 90p) is a rare achievement — a narrative poem that improves as it goes along. Animal Garden (Deutsch 90p) is less successful. Jack Prelutsky imitates Nash so closely he could almost be the same man under a pseudonym. His Zoo Doings and Other Poems (Hamish Hamilton El) is a clever, entertaining book. Somehow I Know (Collins 60p), by Carol Madden Adorjan, is one of the Beginner/Early Bird books, and a good one. The series tends to be brash and twee at the same time, but has the merit of vitality, and by sheer energy most of the books win out. Someone I Know is a little girls' book, quieter than In a People House (Collins 60p) by Theo LeSieg, in which the verse is a minimal rhyme list of household objects for reading practice, but admirably and expertly done. Both books are in the primary traditfon of pedagogic instructional verse, one commending bravery and patience, the other helping to learn to read. Since children like to be brave and patient and able to read, I reckon they'll find them pure pleasure. Lastly, from America Father's Fox's Pennyrhymes (Macmillan £1.50). Clyde Watson's pleasant pastiche nursery rhymes make a distinguished book through being matched with her sister's colour illustrations. Wendy Watson also illustrates Nash's Animal Garden, mentioned above. The difference in quality is staggering: the Nash book it just dull hack work; in Father Fox the quality of the drawing is of minor importance, because the page appearance is individual, and attractive in ensemble.

Now it's time to grit your teeth and read about George Barker. His latest book, The Alphabetical Zoo (Faber £1.30) is his best to date, as it happens — not so much Barker and a bit more bite. No doubt when you're churning them out you need to have a formula of some sort, and it is an idea for a book; think of an animal for each letter of the alphabet, and write a poem about it. When you start producing first lines like that of Barker's "Bee", though — "I buzz, I buzz, I buzz because I am a Bee," — it's time to buzz off. Roy Fuller is another adult poet who has brought out a children's book. Seen Grandpa Lately? (Deutsch) is a little bookful of rhymed wry asides, arch and dull. One senses a total lack of editorial guidance in such books. Both Barker and Fuller seem to have worked out that children's poetry needs to rhyme, and ought somehow to be pretty clever as versification. Has this idea come from Belloc? Neither comes within miles of his skill — and how can they? Belloc exploited the idea to such an extent that in the end he wasn't writing for children anyway. Even if you admire his poems, and would like to imitate them, you are unlikely to be able to do so, since the energy of any idea lies partly in its novelty. The logical extension of Belloc was Harry Graham's Ruthless Rhymes. After them you must admit defeat and look for something different.

Chatto have a new series, Chatto Poets for the Young, edited by Leonard Clark, with a first release of four titles. They are very cheap books, 65p, and pretty horrible to look at, especially as the jackets lead one to expect much younger poems than those offered by R.

S. Thomas, in Young and Old (Chatto 65p) and Michael Baldwin, in Hob and Other Poems (Chatto 65p). The title page of the

series is as inept as typography can get. The idea of the series is so good that it is to be hoped Chatto will either get a book designer to look at it, or take it out of the hands of

their book designer, whichever the case may be. R. S. Thomas's poems make the best collection of the four, but they are grim and sad, Central Welsh, like Bala Lake reflecting a leaden sky. Michael Baldwin's Hob makes more sense than most children's verse when reduced to plain terms. The style is plastered on top, impasto, as a decoration, rather than rising out of the subject matter and being in itself the poetry, so over-all the poems are off-putting — like someone met in the army, marvellous raconteur in a pub, but in the end you knew he was going to be sick on the floor. What's more, it was all bloody lies in the first place. Hob is worth trying, perhaps partly as a way into the difficult poetry of Peter Redgrove. And Michael Baldwin has that magical attribute "stature" — he still stands up after you've knocked him down. Leonard Clark's own collection, Secret as Toads (Chatto 65p), is sensible, careful verse, rather like the form of service adopted to be read at the blessing of hamsters. If the poet could smash the glass and let in some cold wind instead of the carefully admitted fresh air, the poems would lose that prissiness which comes of too much care and not enough energy. Edward Lowbury's Green Magic (Chatto 65p). is for younger children, and likeable. I hope

the series will develop: it was much needed, qnd has great potential. Leonard Clark deserves special praise for getting it under way.

Poems to Hear and See (Collier Macmillan U.05), is a collection of concrete poems by Ian Hamilton Finlay. They are for the most part reduced in size, in some cases drastically and too much, from sheets published by Finlay's Wild Hawthorn Press, and John Furnival's Openings Press. They are printed on drab tinted paper, making a dismal book. But I would strongly recommend the originals, which are often beautifully crisp and elegant. Also of course like most concrete poems, the originals are designed either as posters or " plakats " to be pinned up. Whether it's poetry or not is too big a question to go into here.. It is certainly art. Finlay's own apologetics are worth looking out for — they seem to pop up in women's magazines and Sunday supplements now and then — if you have doubts about the morality of saying so little with such fuss. If on the other hand you are intrigued already, and would like to explore the further reaches of concrete, I recommend Tom Phillips's Trailer (Hansjorg Mayer £1.80). Phillips's A Humament, from which Trailer is excerpted, is too sophisticated for children. However, the stylishness and underlying seriousness of these drawings which almost, but not quite, obliterate the printed pages of the Victorian novel on which they are done, show that concrete verse has a potential beyond any expectations raised by the much anthologised "Computer's First Christmas Card " of Edwin Morgan, jolly though that is. If you are teaching or introducing simple concrete poems to children, it is as well to be aware of what lies beyond them.

The ideas of childhood are as familiar to us as cups and saucers, and the poetry of childhood is the poetry of cups and saucers, of everyday objects, sights, and emotions. There is no need to lead the mind into adolescence: biology does that wholly unassisted. But there is every need to prepare the mind to get through to the other side of adolescence, to make it sturdy and supple enough to survive the gales it is going to encounter in some more flexible -way than giving up all hope intellectually, and "settling down." Or I sup pose I should mention the alternative: giving up all hope intellectually, and going to the

drugs of various kinds. If we juggle to entertain children, we should juggle household articles, not concepts, flags, passions. Andrew Salkey, the editor and compiler of Breaklight: An Anthology of Caribbean Poetry, (Hamish Hamilton £1.75), has taken the opportunity to air the grievances of the West Indian peoples. I am told that I underrate the race problem: that when a white man meets a black man, alone, face to face, he is frightened — "it is that deep." I can only say that, when I meet a member of the landed aristocracy, or the Police force, I am frightened. When I meet a cow alone face to face, I am frightened. Why? What frightens me is the unpredictable use of a power I'm not quite sure about. And that is why it makes more sense to say it is the black man who is frightened, and with good cause. But what will the black man do? Most of us have no idea. We know next to nothing of his cultures, which differ as much from each other as they differ from ours. So let's learn about his cultures, let's talk about cups and saucers, drink together, listen to each other. The subject of the mess that was yesterday isn't the best possible start. The way to make friends is to share a few pleasures together. There is little pleasure to be had from Breaklight. A fair indication of the kind of poem it contains is Derek Walcott's " Negatives," which opens:

A newsclip: the invasion of Biafra: black corpses ...

Which turns out to be a chopped prose ac

count of a newsreel the poet happened to see: that is to say, it is third-hand reportage. All of which is fair enough: I have no objection to poets writing in any way they please. But why have such poems been anthologised in this way?

By extension of my argument, it is the unpredictability of nature which challenges and perhaps frightens us. In the past that challenge has been met by brute force. In the future there won't be room left on the earth for devastation: all the space will have been used up. We shall have to live together, with nature and each other, whether we like it or not. Breaklight runs counter to this everyday philosophy, bringing not the gifts of a culture which is celebrated for its colourfulness and gaiety, but a legacy of hatred and oppression. The poets blame the white man. I blame the editor. He is not writing for nigger slave owners, but for children of his own race and colour who live in England, many of them born here, and who go to English schools. And he is writing for our children who go to the same schools with them. That is his audience. He seems hell-bent on making sure that nothin' is forgotten, nothin' is forgiven, man. To understand the past, to make us able to accept the present, to help us pattern the future: these are parts of the usefulness of literature. I do not believe children will be able to understand the past of the Caribbean from the picture painted by these poems. Not all the poems are political sociology, but enough of them are to sour the flavour of the book. No doubt they were meant to make

uncomfortable reading, and maybe history excuses the editor for giving space to the cry of "Look what the bastards done to me." If he really cared he would be more concerned with the positive contribution " Look what we can do for ourselves." The previous genera tion, despite being expoited, sent almost every one of these poets to university. Was it a • waste of time?

Throughout this article I have in various ways stated or implied a specific view of children's poetry. A writer whose book is opened by a reader becomes an invited guest to that reader's mind. He will have been invited there to entertain and to teach. For the adult reader I see no reason why the writer should be called on to behave in a conventional manner — the result would be universal tedium. Over the years the adult has built up an experience of literature which enables him to keep a sense of proportion when faced with, say, Kafka, Burroughs or even Kahlil Gibran. With children we should not unreservedly play safe, but I believe we should be sure that the doors of the mind are opened widely enough to admit a solid proportion of traditional furniture before we introduce the agent provocateur. If there is no tradition, there is no advance from tradition. You can't throw the furniture around if you haven't first moved it in.

A shortened version of an article published in the May 1973 Signal (Thimble Press, Weaver's, Amberley, Glos. GL5 5BA.).