Children's Poetry: Robert Dunbar on verse old and new for teenagers and younger children.
The colourful world of traditional nursery rhymes continues to act as a source of inspiration for many of our distinguished picture-book artists. Attractive as much of their output is, however, there are few contemporary examples which attain the standard of excellence achieved exactly 50 years go in Lavender's Blue, compiled by Kathleen Lines and "pictured" by Harold Jones. The classic status of this particular volume has been recognised by its reissue in a special anniversary facsimile version of the original (Oxford, £14.99, also available at £30 in a limited slipcase edition).
The particular appeal of the Lines-Jones volume lies in the freshness it brings to these most familiar of rhymes, a freshness which, paradoxically, is expressed in an arrangement of text and in a style of artwork and presentation which, even in 1954, must have been seen as "old-fashioned". There is nothing radical here, nothing straining after enforced interpretation. Instead, even something as widely known as the eight lines beginning "Goosey, goosey, gander" or the five verses narrating the story of Little Bo Beep take on their own richly imaginative lives, often quietly revealing something of what the original texts may conceal. The overall effect is of a volume offering a beguiling childhood domain all of its own.
With reproductions of the original illustrations by "BTB" (Basil Blackwood) and the inclusion of some new artwork by Quentin Blake, Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Verses (Red Fox, £6.99) provides a new generation with the opportunity to sample these once-familiar texts. In an era which has seen the success of the Lemony Snicket stories, the continuing popularity of Belloc's verses need hardly be questioned: they manage to combine a self-consciously reprimanding and sardonic adult voice with a sense of humour which is exaggeratedly dark. It is to their apparent ruthlessness and the technical skill of their composition that young readers will be drawn.
Described as a "first collection for teenagers", the poems in Stephen Knight's Sardines and Other Poems (Young Picador, £7.99) reveal similarly impressive levels of technical assurance, though their essentially elegiac and meditative tone could hardly be more different from Belloc's. Their focus is largely on the passage of time, the evolution of childhood into adolescence and the years beyond: "When my time comes, I hope to know:/ to close the gate: to look back once: then go." The expressions of regret in the face of inevitable loss are touching, if, perhaps, more frequently given an adult, rather than an adolescent, perspective.
By contrast, the principal voices in Crash, by Andrew Fusek Peters and Polly Peters (Hodder Bite, £9.99), are very recognisably those of a certain kind of raw-edged teenage experience. Presented as a novel in verse, the narrative has at its centre the tragic death of one of three young protagonists and the responses of those who survive. If at times the verses seem rather slapdash, there is no denying their strong emotional force; from a set of fairly conventional circumstances the authors succeed in creating a story which many teenagers should find genuinely relevant to their lives.
Where the Peters's fiction is largely plot-driven, Malorie Blackman's Cloud Busting (Doubleday, £7.99), another example of the verse novel, enters deeper psychological waters. This is the story of Sam and his growing friendship with Danny, an "outsider" newly arrived at their school: the crux of their relationship comes when Sam finds himself in a situation where he has "To choose between the kind of boy I was/ And the kind of boy I wanted to be." Blackman's insights into the complexities of the boys' friendship move convincingly between the humorous and the poignant, all set against a credible portrayal of their school and their fellow pupils.
Should the poems in these volumes convey a notion of poetry which, in the main, is something reflective and literary, the gloriously energetic celebration of oral verse in From Mouth to Mouth, edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols (Walker, £5.99), will serve as an excellent reminder of its noisier and more public manifestations. Timeless and universal in their range, these are poems which demand vigorous reader participation in the form of abandonment to the might, magic and mystery of words.
Robert Dunbar is head of English at the Church of Ireland College of Education, Rathmines, Dublin