From Schoolyard Rhymes to Poetry Professorships...

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:38:43 +0200

"Dip, Dip, Dip,

My Blue Ship..."

Along with this, and the wording becomes hazy after the opening couplet in my 63-year-old (today!) memory, the first bits of doggerel I recall are:

"G's for the Guards in their scarlet & gold,

A truly magnificent sight to behold !"

pitter-pattered out in the quadrangle of Layton Infants' School along with schoolmates with a couplet each to recite (only Tony Gilbert managed to fluff his lines, and burst into tears as he often did).

And an old favourite:

"I had a little nut tree.

Nothing would it bear,

But a silver nutmeg,

And a golden pear.

The King of Spain's daughter

Came to visit me,

And all for the sake

Of my little nut tree!"

Thinking back to my infancy, how I agree with both T.S. Eliot & Ezra Pound that it is the lilt of language which entices us first - sheer enjoyment precedes meaningful understanding.

Still after fifty or so years of reading and puzzling over, I am enjoying Four Quartets and The Pisan Cantos as well as reams of other poetry and other examples of artistic expression.

I am delighted to learn that fellow investigator Steve Roud is working on a book on playground lore which sounds as though it will update the invaluable earlier work by the Opies which I enjoyed during my teacher-training in the early 1970s.

I suspect Steve Roud has his focus on the experience of the British Isles, but he says he will be delighted to hear of any rhymes or games. past or present, via his website, www.loreoftheplayground.co.uk, or via his e-mail sroud@btinternet.com

He would be particularly pleased to hear from anyone with children or grandchildren between the ages of seven and eleven who are willing to be interviewed about their current playground games. Do English-speaking children in former colonies or now Commonwealth countries have interesting local variants?

I connect playground chants and childhood rhymes with the posts of Poet Laureate and Oxford Professor of Poetry, both posts recently awarded to women (only Ruth Padel has since resigned the Oxford post after accusations of academic skulduggery) for the first time in Britain because I suspect that, like me, the long-ago snatches of doggerel will have been the first introduction to poetry of both Carol Ann Duffy, new UK Poet Laureate, and Ruth Padel, now no longer, sadly, to become Oxford's Professor of Poetry.

From my male perspective it always seemed that the "lore of the playground" was passed on most sacredly by girls, and the plethora of superb women poets whose work we so enjoy currently is a direct result of their mastery of the babble of childhood.

I shall return to this topic as mining my earlier life is a major inspiration for my writing.

I should like to hear the thoughts of others - are the Arts at the centre of your life, as they are in mine, and if so, why so?

Comments

Babbling like a brook

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:30:19 +0200

BABBLING, LIKE A BROOK
For NG in Boca Raton; i.m. Robert Browning

In the upstairs shower stall, Ryan rinsed a conch.
I half expected him, Jack or Ralph-like, to blow on it.
We had no colander on the kitchen hooks. It’s not first lover stuff.
Shower stalls are. So too are large aquaria, worth the dough for show.

We stood there, glass tank at our feet, mutely debating,
smeary glass door wide with coral & conch in hair-washing spray.

The shower head fizzed into sand-weighted water.
From a foot away, I watched, wondering. A foot from the fizz.
Could now we say we had showered together; would that be no lie?
Almost accurate was it, nearly truthful that we’d reached what?

That turning point in our relationship we had anticipa
The turning point where showering together is routine, even
if both of us stay fully clothed. “Sure we did it,” we can say
to ourselves and each other, at least. And nobody saw.

In Sex & the City our eyes would have met. Close-up. Chemistry.
Same thought crackling electrically, coursing me to Ryan, he to me.
Tank gone. Removed. Totally out of mind. Merely a McGuffin to get us to where
clothes fell away beneath urgent hands, effortlessly, no fumbling this time.

A magic wand translates us into McQueen and Dunaway after chess.
Shower stall extends enough to contain us comfortably. Miracle in mind.
Water as hot as we like? An unlimited supply. No stumbling, slipping,
fumbling, or odd grunts. Call of the conch should be so smooth.

Shower stall to be our consummate ease spot for a moment. I think,
but with the conch properly rinsed, the last of the sand from it has gone.
Now it’s more than a week ago. More than a week has passed since that night.
There is the tank, babbling like a brook. It is empty, needing fish.

Writer: Duke Barrett (nom de plume).

Comments