I’ve been thinking about poetry for children recently. That’s partly because our youngest is a toddler, and I’ve been reminded all over again just how many of the best books for the very youngest children are in verse. Quite a lot of poor verse, of course, but plenty is actually excellent. I’d be very surprised if any poet in English sells better than Julia Donaldson, and deservedly so: she’s a good poet, whose poems not only bear repetition but — truly an acid test this — remain charming and enjoyable even on the fifteenth rendition in the space of twelve hours. (All the same, my absolute favourite toddler picture book-poem remains the delightful, and metrically extremely satisfying, Peepo, by Janet and Allen Ahlberg.)
But verse disappears from the landscape of children’s literature quite rapidly after the earliest years. You can still buy illustrated anthologies of poetry for children, but I haven’t seen any recently published examples of the sort of un-illustrated but hard-wearing volumes designed for a parent or teacher to read aloud, several of which were still knocking around when I was a child, even if they weren’t exactly new then, either. In fact, I had such fond memories of the contents of one particular volume, The Book of a Thousand Poems, that I bought a second-hand copy to read to my own children.1 It starts with the simplest sorts of nursery rhymes and counting rhymes, but then expands to encompass an enormous range, grouped loosely in thematic sections but with everything otherwise cheek-by-jowl: plenty of pieces by authors like Enid Blyton and dozens of other forgotten or largely forgotten authors of the early 20th century, but also a huge range of poems and extracts reaching back to Shakespeare, Herrick, Watts, Bunyan, dozens of 18th and 19th century poets, and forward roughly as far as the 1930s (there are some pieces by Laurence Binyon and Siegfried Sassoon, for instance). Taken together, it’s actually not a bad entry point into English verse for anyone, child or adult, if you take a long view and don’t mind a version of English poetry which essentially ends before modernism.2 (A version which, after all, remains the standard, or at least preferred understanding of what “poetry” is, for most people outside self-consciously literary circles.) Three of the best represented authors are William Blake, John Clare and Christina Rossetti. (And in case any of my readers have sleepless children, it also has a very substantial section of cradle songs and bedtime poems.)
Looking at the book again, I was struck also by its gender balance: because, I suppose, women have always been more likely to write verse specifically for or about young children, this is an anthology with a remarkably large proportion of poetry by women — I’m not sure I can think of a single other anthology of English poetry as a whole with so much verse by women, if you set aside anthologies of purely contemporary material (now that a majority of publishing poets are women) or anthologies specifically of women’s writing. This is true not only of the ranks of forgotten or half-forgotten names, but also because it includes poetry by figures like Alice Meynell, Dorothy Wordsworth, Frances Chesterton, Sara Coleridge and her daughter Mary Elizabeth Coleridge alongside Rossetti and Dickinson. There’s a bit of George Eliot too, on roses:
You love the roses - so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
Inevitably there are some examples of the ‘I’m a pert little pimpernel’ type, but there are a lot of very good poems here. I think the prize for most surprising change of register must go to the final lines of Charles Williams’ ‘Walking Song’, which come after a page or more of stirring imaginative adventures set around the world:
For here the noble lady is who meets us from our wanderings,
Here are all the sensible and very needful things,
Here are blankets, here is milk, here are rest and slumber,
And the courteous prince of angels with the fire about his wings.
There’s no Milton in The Book of a Thousand Poems, but take on board a few endings like that and you’d be more than ready for him.
Quite a large number of major works used to be written ‘for children’, intended more or less explicitly to bridge that gap from infancy to adult reading. Two of the books I’ve been reading in French recently were originally written for children or teenagers, albeit in the seventeenth century: Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque, written in the 1690s for a grandson of Louis XIV, and Racine’s three-act (rather than the usual five-act) play, Esther, written for schoolgirls in 1689. I’ll come back to Racine’s lovely play another time, but Fénelon’s book was enormously popular for at least 150 years, and remained significant well after that.3 It is hard to summarise its very particular pleasures, because it is both relentlessly didactic and entirely charming. It is very beautifully written, and seventeenth-century French is much closer to the formal register of the contemporary language than the English equivalents, so it is also entirely accessible. It is not a poem, but it is a lesson in how to read a series of major poems, being a kind of synthetic version of them all: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses chief among them, though in a narrative which blends all of these also with parts of the Old Testament and other classical literature and philosophy. If, as an adult, you already know all of these works quite well, then the pleasure of the text is similar to the pleasure of a loving pastiche or a sacred parodia in its early (un-satiric) sense. But Fénelon wrote it for a child: if you read this and loved it in childhood, then you would come to all these great classical texts with, I think, a feeling of fond familiarity, a sense of ease and assurance: and it would be hard, perhaps, ever to shake off entirely the book’s particular atmosphere, however much classical literature you might end up reading for yourself.4
So Fénelon’s book is in large part about how to read (classical) poetry, and how much our interpretations of what we read, for the rest of our lives, might be shaped by the works that introduced us, just as the adventures of Telemachus himself prepare him morally and emotionally for his adult life. The Book of a Thousand Poems, more modestly, teaches its readers (or listeners) that English poetry is enjoyable as well as improving, and above all that it is an accessible pleasure, with something for everyone, whether you identify more with pirates and explorers, or the difficulty of choosing new shoes.5 But what about the next stage? Is there anything much today that takes older children by the hand, as Fénelon tried to do, and leads them from children’s verse to the landscape of adult poetry?
I have written before about how discovering Hardy’s poetry marked a watershed for me, after which I began to read seriously and widely in “adult” English literature. But I was primed to hear Hardy, and to appreciate the astonishing variety of his music, by an earlier experience. I became interested in writing poetry when I was about 9, for reasons that I can’t now really remember, and in response my mother (I think) bought me in the first instance two books: a little paperback edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and Philip Gross’s Manifold Manor, published that year by Faber, and therefore stocked I suppose by our small local bookshop.
Manifold Manor is an odd thing from a marketing perspective: it’s a book of poetry for children but it’s not labelled or indicated as such except insofar as it has a slightly more ‘illustrated’ cover than was the standard for Faber editions at the time. Scattered throughout the book there are a few line drawings of the jackdaw on the cover, a sort of presiding genius, inspired remotely perhaps by Ted Hughes’ Crow. The poems are presented without glosses or introduction, just as in any ordinary verse collection, and they are mostly not about children or obviously child-focused themes. There’s a page or two of notes and suggestions in the back, in small type, which I do remember reading though I’m not sure if I noticed them the first time round.
Manifold Manor is a wonderful collection, a hugely generous and inviting — and not at all condescending — invitation into “adult” verse for any bright child. There is a loose narrative theme: most of the poems are linked to different parts of an abandoned home, the manor of the title. The implicitly Edwardian setting of several historical poems links neatly to mainstream children’s fiction at the time, which was still - in my recollection at least - quite dominated by books either from this period (such as E. Nesbit and Frances Hodgson Burnett) or set in houses haunted by children of the past (Tom’s Midnight Garden; Children of Green Knowe and so on). Stories of this general type were regularly dramatised for children’s television in the 80s. So a moderately bookish child of upper primary age at the time had an imaginative context already in place in which the challenging looser structure of a book of poems could be inserted.
Once inside, Manifold Manor tactfully offers an, in fact, very carefully curated introduction to a whole series of verse forms: there’s a sonnet, free verse, riddles, songs, lyrics and narrative poems, bits of dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter and so on. The house is haunted in many different forms. Here’s the start of ‘The Cry-by-Night’, with its introduction to half-rhyme and enjambment:
It’s wind in the eaves, they’ll tell you, micein the attic, old timbers stretching and yawning . . .It’s no good. Hear it once, you’re lost. MissNobody’s grieving, somewhere.
I was so thrilled with the book that I asked for all the author’s other books too — Gross had published three other collections before this one, and another one came out shortly afterwards.6 I did not realise — and I’m not sure if my mother did either; or if she did, she wisely didn’t say — that the other collections were not for children. I got hold of them and read them just the same, with great enjoyment if occasional mild confusion.
There are a couple of poems in Gross’s collections on quite adult themes. There’s a funny sonnet about semen which I certainly did not understand. But Manifold Manor is full of poems — like ‘The Cry-by-Night’ — about catching glimpses, hearing snatches, and only partially understanding. It’s almost the theme of the book, and in its own way it’s as richly didactic as Les Aventures de Télémaque. It shows how literary language might be pleasurable and challenging, even if you don’t really know what’s going on, and that’s probably why I wasn’t too worried by all that I didn’t grasp in Gross’s adult collections. I remember a poem called ‘Catch’ in particular, which comes right at the end of the 1991 collection The Son of the Prince of Nowhere. (For Horatians, it’s a kind of version of Odes 3.9: it all starts up again at the end.) It’s a fairly long poem, but this is how it starts:
Here is a woman. Here is a man.
And here is how the game began.
We call it Catch Me if You Can.
He was the one and only,
She wrapped him all around.
He kicked against his swaddlings.
She knew where he was bound.
His first cry was ERGO SUM. She knew the proof was sound.
I play Robber. You play Cop.
We play Catch You on the Hop.
He toyed with a naked razor.
She taught him how to shave.
He said: I’m off to do or die.
She waited like the grave.
He left her on the harbour wall and she became a wave.
I had a complicated reaction to this poem: I loved it, enjoyed memorising it, relished the aphoristic concision of it, while also feeling tantalised by the awareness of all that I didn’t understand here. Formally, it was just the kind of thing that could have been in Manifold Manor — so I was well equipped to read it in a technical sense — but its subject was so deliciously and bafflingly grown-up.
I learnt many things from reading Gross’s poems, including individual words (Manifold Manor was where I learnt the words oubliette and fugue); geography (I looked up Estonia in the atlas after reading The Son of the Duke of Nowhere); and, of course, that whole range of verse forms. Reading Gross showed me, too, that poets were actually out there, right now, producing new work: he was the first poet — and actually perhaps the first author of any kind apart from Roald Dahl — whom I ‘followed’ in real time, eager to read the next volume as it appeared. I was delighted to have the opportunity, last year, to write a review essay which set his most recent collection within the context of his whole career, a tribute from a lifelong reader.
Manifold Manor is not much at all like Fénelon or Racine, but it belongs to the same tradition: serious but accessible works written for older children as a bridge to the pleasures and challenges of adult literature. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of this kind of writing, when it works, but I’m out of touch with what might be appearing now. Who are the best poets writing today for older children? If you know of any more recent collections of poetry of this type, do let me know what they are and I’ll add the recommendations to this post.
My edition reveals that it was first published by Evans in 1942; my copy is the thirty-second printing.
There’s no T. S. Eliot, for instance — not even one of his Practical Cats (pub. 1939) — or any Auden, which there surely would be if you redid such a volume today. No Yeats either, though there is some Hardy. Surprisingly, however, there is a single poem by James Joyce, ‘Goldenhair’. You can read the poem here.
My edition tells me it was continuously one of the most frequently published books in France between 1699 and 1914, and it is very frequently mentioned by English authors in the 18th century as well. I don’t know anything about the available English translations of this book, and whether any of them do a good job of capturing its peculiar atmosphere and tone. If anyone can recommend one, do put it in the comments.
It’s true that the book is also an entertainingly thorough-going and perhaps somewhat self-serving fantasy about the unique virtue and power of the ideal teacher. (Fénelon was tutor to the dauphin’s son.)
There is an impressively thorough and useful index, in four parts: by title, by subject, by first line and by author.
The Ice Factory (1984); Cat’s Whisker (1987); The Air Mines of Mistila, with Sylvia Kantaris (1988), The Son of the Duke of Nowhere (1991). I also read his novel for children, The Song of Gail and Fludd (1991), as soon as it appeared: the hardback edition was a Christmas present in December 1991.
I really enjoyed that, thank you: especially the comments about Julia Donaldson at the start. Metrically she is extremely precise and it feels almost belittling to class her simply as a children's author.
Some comments: some of the older children's literature I read as a child had more adult poetry weaved into their fabric in a way that I don't see in more modern children's books. For example, as a boy I read my way through Jennings and Darbishire: I remember one plot line which was based around on whether a prep was to write a poem or copy one out. One of the lead characters had something like 'Before we must play cricket / we need a wicket / we scored ninety-three / and then had tea'; another boy copied out Tennyson's 'Break, break, break' which was reproduced in full; the plot somehow integrated a discussion of why the second was better than the first. Similarly, when introducing my older son to classic British children's book I discovered that 1950s Billy Bunter books could have a chunk of untranslated Aeneid dumped into the text. Probably ambitious even then, though....
One thing to bring up is what I will call boys' poetry (hopefully what I mean by this will be clear). Personally my route into poetry, around the age of 10, was through poems like The Charge of the Light Brigade; The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna; Hohenlinden; Vitae Lampada: works with a clear rhythm on appealing topics and not requiring any complex emotions. They went in my head then and never left. As an adult I can recognise this as B+ `good bad verse', but they were jolly good fun as a child and a way in to a broader appreciation of poetry (and there really doesn't seem to be much in a similar register since Kipling).
I think many boys (not all, but I certainly include my younger self) are slower than girls to find books, or poetry, centred on human emotion interesting. I bounced straight off Jane Austen when I had to read her for A-level English (five daughters seeking husbands? really?) but enjoyed her hugely at 30. In terms of poetry and children, much of the British school system and literary culture seems to foreground a loose free verse focused on feeling and emotion (cf the success of Kate Clanchy's books and the poems they include). I do worry that there are lots of boys who would really enjoy poetry but are permanently put off because they are taught that it is something in tension with where their interests lie.
This was also my experience with my elder son (9 1/2 at the time) during the grim days that started in March 2020. I put learning poetry by heart on our home schooling syllabus, but the ones that `took' and went in were those in this broad register (which can also include A+ verse (e.g. Henry V speeches)).
I'm aware the above is quite boy-focused (and not all boys are the same; some boys are acutely sensitive etc etc). In my defense, I was a boy and went to a boys' school; I have brothers and sons, but no sisters or daughters, and so while I have some developed thoughts on what could, broadly, benefit 10 - 18 year old boys I have no good sense of what makes teenage girls tick.
Final point: in fairness one should note that there are a lot of popular and widely selling 'verse novels' for the YA market, although when I have looked inside these the versification didn't seem (at least to my jaundiced eye) to consist of much more than funky line-breaks.
Thanks Victoria, I love this subject - curious to see what people come up with! The Emma Press have done some themed anthologies in recent years which might be the right age (I'm in two, so should declare an interest): https://theemmapress.com/product-category/childrens/poetry-anthologies/
Otherwise, the thing that immediately springs to mind is comic/nonsense verse. But none of my examples are exactly recent. We had Dahl's Revolting Rhymes on tape, I still remember Allan Ahlerg's 'Please Mrs Butler' (just poems in that one), Tilda can recite Belloc, I used to read lots of Spike Milligan and plenty of people who don't read poetry can still recite The Jabberwocky....