Childhood Poetry

You don't have to be a grown up to enjoy poetry - just a bit weird. Here's a look back at the rhymes and rhythms that surrounded my own youth, long ago... long, long ago... long, long, long....

I grew up with poetry all around me. In fact I don't remember a time when there wasn't poetry somewhere in my life. My mother was a big fan, especially of Scottish poetry, Robert Burns and the bothy ballads, so my love of the form probably started before I did. Like all children (I hope!) my memories of poetry start with nursery rhymes. From Incy Wincy Spider (or mincey piedy as I apparently called it when I was 2), through Little Boy Blue and Baa Baa Black Sheep to Mary had a Little Lamb, the oral tradition of passing on rhymes was strong in our household.

Soon we graduated to reading "proper" poems at bedtime. To be honest I think it was just a cop-out on mother's behalf because reading a bedtime poem didn't take nearly as long as reading a whole fairy story. I had my favourite poems of course, and would pick her up on it if she skipped bits, because the words didn't rhyme at the ends. A A Milne's poetry was a go-to, especially the poems and songs of Winnie-ther-Pooh (yes the r is intentional, tiddly-pom) and Christopher Robin, as was the Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson, where Leerie the Lamp Lighter and the splendid Land of Counterpane set many a dream cycle spinning - yes, I was a weird child. But my absolute favourite, reproduced from memory below, all copyrights acknowledged, was called Milly the Cow.

Milly the Cow was tired of her field
"I'm going to explore" she lowed
So she squeezed herself through a hole in the hedge
And away she ran down the road

At the end of the lane was a lady
"How d'you doooo" Milly mooed when they met
But the lady put up her umbrella
Indeed she was VERY upset

Milly pushed her bit head underneath it
And mooed "Please don't mind about me!"
But the lady screamed loudly for someone to "HELP!"
Dreadfully frightened was she

Farmer soon came to the rescue
"Now back to your field Milly, quick!"
He cried as he tapped her back gently
with the end of his walking stick

So back to her field trotted Milly
Her adventure was short, it is true
but at least now she has an umbrella
with two holes where her horns had gone through

I have no idea who wrote that poem because it was uncredited in the book of 365 Bedtime Stories, which I remember had a purple cloth cover, but it was one of the first things I learned off by heart and it has stuck with me all this time.

As I grew up a bit and started school, the poetry evolved into playground chants, used to keep pace for skipping, clapping games or bouncing a ball - I know, I'm really showing my age here and the fact that it was a country school. At home I started reading poetry for myself and gravitated again towards the classics, with Lewis Carroll's poetry like Jabberwocky being a particular favourite. I also discovered two of my favourite ever poems, Cargoes and Sea Fever, and didn't find out until many years later that they were written by the same person, John Masefield. His work remains a favourite to this day.

When I was eleven, just before I started secondary school and just before I began to realise that I really was a weird child because I got bullied about it for most of first year... anyway, I digress. When I was eleven, I discovered Shakespeare. This was not something I meant to do, nor something that was pushed at home - mother didn't like Shakespeare's writing - so I'm not sure quite how I got there. But I remember that I asked Granny for a book of Shakespeare's poetry and plays for my eleventh birthday (I told you I was a weird child) and she looked at me funny, but I got given a "Complete Works" and I read it from cover to cover. As well as the rhyming couplets of the plays' dialogue, the book also had the full set of sonnets and that was when I discovered that poems could have varying, named structures. The rhymes didn't have to happen at the end of every second line. Poetry, like me, could be different, and it was ok. It's just a pity others didn't see it that way too.

So there you have it. My childhood in verses and how poetry has threaded its way through my whole existence from birth to bullying and beyond. And, with the discovery of new work, new words and new creators every day, I hope it will continue to be a part of who I am - because that's the kind of weird I want to be.