Category: Poetry News

New Songs for Old! Re-inventing Nursery Rhymes.

Nursery rhymes – we all know and love them.  Who didn’t grow up with ditties like Hey Diddle Diddle, Mary Mary, Quite Contrary, or Humpty Dumpty?  They’re part of the furniture of the nursery of childhood.

What is less well known is that many of these rhymes – some hundreds of years old – have themes and subject matter of a decidedly adult nature.  One theory about Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, for example, is that the rhyme refers to Queen Mary I of England, the “silver bells and cockle shells” referencing the instruments of torture that she used to convert recalcitrant Protestants to Catholicism.  Other rhymes have somewhat dubious content – like the Old Woman who lived in a shoe, with her multitude of children who could only be dealt with by a sound smacking and sending off to bed.  As a child growing up in Kolkata, India, I remember being mildly frightened by rhymes such as this, as well as bemused by the very English world they created: Dr Foster getting drenched in Gloucester, the Grand Old Duke of York marching his men up and down the hill.

These rhymes are known and loved by generations of children.  They form part of our collective childhood memory.  But memory is a living thing, not a mausoleum.  It should be added to, if we’re to have dynamic and not fossilized childhoods.  Modern nursery rhymes are diverse and inclusive: Dennis Lee’s Alligator Pie, which gave Canadian children a whole body of nursery rhymes referencing their own landscape; or Jane Newberry’s gorgeously illustrated, interactive book of rhymes for young children, Big Green Crocodile, shortlisted for the 2021 CLiPPA award.

For older children, fractured and re-worked nursery rhymes provide a rich source for honing critical and analytical skills, for questioning clichés and exploring history.  In my poem What Are Little Girls Made Of?, for example, gender stereotypes are turned on their heads in a joyous mish-mash, encouraging children to think critically about them, and to explore their individual identity:

What Are Little Girls Made Of?

What are little girls made of?

What are little girls made of?

Swords and roars and dinosaurs

pirates, Death Stars, dragons’ claws

castles, pistols, ragged shirts

bows and arrows, finger-dirt

grubby knees and paint-stained faces

every lack of social graces.

That’s what little girls are made of.

What are little boys made of?

What are little boys made of?

Ribbons, bows, curly locks

Lady Gaga, sparkly socks

fluffy diaries, friendship bracelets

secret notes in hidden places

cupcakes topped with chocolate sprinkles

fairy wands that wink and twinkle.

That’s what little boys are made of.

But, you say, hang on a mo –

I am a pirate with a bow.

Or actually, I’d rather be

making cupcakes up a tree.

No, I’m a princess with a patch –

Don’t stress, it’s fine to mix and match.

By far the best is to be true

to the bestest person: YOU.

©Piu DasGupta.  First published in The Dirigible Balloon, August 2021

Activities for KS3 pupils based on this poem could include: looking through newspaper and/or magazine articles and cutting out clichéd or recurring descriptions of men and women; are some adjectives considered “male” (handsome, strong) and some “female” (pretty, sweet) – what could be used instead?  Or the children could create their own “fractured” nursery rhymes, replacing key words to turn stereotypes on their heads –

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater

Had a wife and did mistreat her

She waved a wand and winked and eye,

And turned him into pumpkin pie.

Older children and teenagers would enjoy more grown-up nursery rhyme parodies, such as that of This Little Piggy Went to Market in Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (William Morrow, 2006).  For a sample Year 7 lesson plan based on examining gender stereotypes in nursery rhymes and modern media, see the end of this article.

It’s also fascinating to unearth the hidden significance of nursery rhymes, the historical and political roots from which they have been cut loose to float free over the years.  One theory about the nursery rhyme Three Blind Mice is that, like Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, it may refer to the martyrs, the Anglican bishops Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, burned at the stake for their Protestant beliefs (and therefore “blind”):

Three blind mice

Paid a high price

The Queen’s beliefs they all three spurned

So at the stake she had them burned,

Those three blind mice.

For many years, the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring of Roses was believed to have its roots in the Great Plague, the “ring” of roses referring to the rosy rash that was one of the symptoms of the Black Death, the “pocketful of posies” the nosegay that was carried to defend against infection, “Atishoo, Atisshoo, we all fall down” referring to a final death.  Although this explanation is now generally disputed by scholars, it does give the rhyme a dark relevance in the context of these pandemic days.

“A nursery rhyme shapes your bones and nerves, and it shapes your mind. They are powerful, nursery rhymes, and immensely old, and not toys, even though they are for children.”  So says a character in Katherine Catmull’s exploration of myth, fable and nursery rhyme, Summer and Bird (Puffin, 2012).  We who read, write and teach nursery rhymes must tread carefully in the magical forest, mindful of their power.  

Piu DasGupta

Piu DasGupta is a British/French/Indian writer based in Paris, France. Although poetry has been a lifelong passion, she turned to writing it quite recently. Her children’s poems have been published to date in magazines such as The Caterpillar, Northern Gravy, and The Dirigible Balloon.  She is on Twitter as @PiuDasGupta1.    

HUGE congratulations to all the CLiPPA (CLPE) shortlisted poets, who were announced today!

The fabulous books are:

Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This, chosen by Nikita Gill, Macmillan

Run, Rebel by Manjeet Mann, Penguin

Big Green Crocodile Rhymes to Say and Play, by Jane Newberry, illustrated by Carolina Rabei, Otter-Barry Books

On the Move, Michael Rosen, illustrated by Quentin Blake, Walker Books

…and my favourite, because it’s by my poet friend (and because it’s stupendous):

A Bright Burst of Colour, Matt Goodfellow, illustrated by Aleksei Bitskoff, Bloomsbury Education.

Congratulations to all the shortlisters, and good luck for 11th October at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, when the winner is announced!

Stephanie Barnes, the PE & EAL Teacher at the International School of Leuven wrote to me the other day and included a lovely poem her English Language learners wrote, after using this website – they had fun writing their own tribbles, too!

Lovely writing, and incredible considering they are using a second language!

The Open University (OU) has launched Book Chat: Reading with your Child, three short films and supporting materials to help parents, families and carers read books conversationally and creatively to children. Working with Macmillan Children’s Books, the films use a selection of their picture books and a poetry collection to support families with reading to different ages of children.

You may have noticed that the poetry collection is The Same Inside, by me, Roger Stevens and Matt Goodfellow, which we are thrilled to see.

The film above is read by Professor Teresa Cremin, who leads the OU’s Reading for Pleasure programme.

If you are an educator, librarian, parent or other person interested in supporting young people develop the reading habit., there is an OU Webinar you may be interested in viewing. The Book Chat crew, Teresa Cremin, Ben Harris and Richard Charlesworth will be joined by the children’s author Smriti Hall (TBC) and Rumenar Atkar, a mum and primary school librarian. The session will include research and practice insights, strategies to enrich informal book talk at home and school, and book recommendations that get everyone talking. The Webinar takes place Tuesday 20 October, 20:00 – 21:00. and can be found here.

Today I’m writing an alliterative poem about a jellyfish! Later I will show you how to make a jellyfish to display your own poem  – which doesn’t have to be about a jellyfish, it can be about any undersea creature.

What is alliteration? Alliteration happens when words in the same sentence have the same first letter sound. Sometimes letters within the words have the same sound which doubles up the effect.

I find fine falafels fabulous. Big bangs bring down bombed buildings. I like licking lemon and lime lollies.

Alliteration is often used in poetry, sometimes to suggest an action or sound that helps with the images. It can be used to help with a rhythm, or draw attention to a word or idea.

I have used a little alliteration in the following poem to suggest and establish the rhythm of the sea:

 

Leafy Sea Dragon

 

Where meadows of

green sea grass grows,

among the waving

seaweed groves,

the leafy dragon

comes and goes,

 

attired in leaves

of seaweed green,

among the weeds

he’s barely seen,

entwined and wreathed

with seas between,

 

and as the dragon

drifts and weaves,

the rhythms

of the sea he breathes,

and none see when

he comes or leaves.

 

© Liz Brownlee

 

So – now to write your poem! Every line does not need to have alliteration in it – and you do not need to have every word alliterating. Neither do you need to use rhyme – it is better to use the best words you can, and having to make a rhyme fit can make what you are saying sound awkward or forced if you are not used to doing it.

Read a bit about your animal so you have some ideas of what to write. Look at images of it.

Lines 1 and 2: Start off your poem naming your animal, saying where it lives. I have chosen a jellyfish because that is the craft I will be doing later, but the jellyfish model can have any poem about any undersea creature attached to it. Perhaps you’d prefer an octopus – and you could make an octopus as easily as a jellyfish – or maybe a dolphin, whale, or other type of fish? These are my first two lines:

Jewelled jellyfish jiving

in the deep, dark waves

You do not need to have all the words alliterative – I could have used the same sound in both lines, but I have used a different sound in line 2. If saying something about your animal sounds better with fewer alliterative words, use the most poetic version!

Line 3 and 4: Tell the reader something else about your creature. This could be what it eats, what it enjoys doing, whether it is active at night or day, or how it is feeling. These are my second two lines:

bobbing in the blueness

all its nights and days

Lines 5 and 6: Use a simile to compare the creature’s habitat or movement to say it is like something else or use a metaphor to say it is something else. If you have chosen a dolphin for example, you might want to say it splashes LIKE a stone skipping water, or it IS a stone skipping splashes through the water. Can you hear the difference between those two descriptions? I think the second metaphor description sounds better. That’s because the rhythm in it suggests the sound of the dolphin jumping through the water. These are my third two lines: 

waving winding tentacles

beneath its water sky

Lines 7 and 8: Using another simile or metaphor, describe your creature’s movement if you haven’t before, or its appearance – using the dolphin example, you might say its skin is like the sun and sea-smoothed sand or is sea and sun-smoothed sand. In this case, I think the simile description sounds better, as it has the better rhythm and sounds more believable. These are my last two lines:

muscles move its bell top

like a lilting lullaby.

 

That’s the end of your poem!

 

Here is my whole poem:

 

Jellyfish

 

Jewelled jellyfish jiving

 

in the deep, dark waves

 

bobbing in the blueness

 

all its nights and days

 

waving winding tentacles

 

beneath its water sky

 

muscles move its bell top

 

like a lilting lullaby

 

Next- you can make a jellyfish to display your sea poem. Read all the instructions so you can see how it is made all the way though first – then you will know why you are doing each stage and be able to work out how long to make strings etc.

 

You will need:

Yogurt pots (clean!)

Buttons or cardboard circles

Scissors, thick needle

Thread, wool, ribbon or parcel ribbon

 

First of all, choose your yogurt pot. I had two types – and chose the rounder version because it would look more like a jellyfish.

Then you will need a button with large holes – I chose the pink one because it had slits – if you do not have any buttons like this, then cut out a disk of thick cardboard, about an inch in diameter. It does not need to be that large, but larger is easier to cut out!

Next you need to cut lengths of something to make the tentacles of your jelly fish. This could be wool, or string, or thin ribbon… I am using thin, shiny curling ribbon which you can curl using your thumbnail pressed against it along it’s length – there are many videos on the internet showing you how to do this.

If you are making an octopus, you can cut wider pieces of thick paper and curl them to make the octopus tentacles.

When you have cut and made 8 tentacles, thread them through the holes in the button and sellotape them together and then to the top of the button. If it is not possible to thread them through, then sellotape each one to the top of the button. If you have made a cardboard disc, then you can either make a slit in it or you can sellotape each tentacle to the top.

If you are making octopus tentacles, the tentacles need to be sellotaped , equally distanced, around the rim of the yogurt pot.

(I do wish I hadn’t been gardening just before this art challenge, then my nails wouldn’t be all broken and ragged!)

Next you need to thread some ribbon, thin string, wool or embroidery cotton through a large needle with a big eye, and knot it at the end.

Put the end of the ribbon through the loop several times so the knot is big enough not to go all the way through the yogurt pot.

This string will hang your jelly fish from wherever you want to put it, so it needs to be fairly long.

Then push your needle up through one of the holes in the button or cardboard disc from underside to top side. If you holes are quite big you can put a piece of tape on the underside of the button or disc to stop the ribbon or string knot going straight through.

Then pull the ribbon through until the knot catches on the underside.

Then thread the needle through the middle of the underside of the yogurt pot. Pull until the button or disc rests against the bottom of the pot.

It should look like this:

I chose to leave my pot undecorated or painted because I think it looks more like a see-through jellyfish. But you can paint it with poster paint at this stage if you like. Or you can stick pieces of paper onto it in a collage of different colours.

Next you need to write out your poem neatly on a piece of stiff A6 paper – a quarter of the size of A4 paper. Do this in pencil first so you can fill the paper and make sure your words are not squashed.

Rub out the pencil before doing the next stage! (I didn’t!) Push the needle with the ribbon through the poem at the bottom middle, front to back. Pull the ribbon through but leave some ribbon space between the top of the jellyfish model and the bottom of the poem.

Then bring the needle it out again at the top, back to front.

That’s it! You are ready to hang your alliterative sea poem!

Hope you enjoyed making this poem! You can write a jellyfish poem using any of the poem prompts from any of the crafts I’ve done over the past weeks.

The next craft poetry challenge will be written by the wonderful Sue Hardy-Dawson!

A poem and drawing (bit rough!) by me today – I wrote this for one of the classes in the school for which I am a Reading Patron.

 

Rabbit

 

This rabbit has ears

very long, times two,

and eyes, very large

with an all-round view,

a snitch with a twitch and a chew.

 

He moves with a hop

and a lope and a leap.

and a thump of his

very large lollopy feet,

to seek treats for his big teeth to eat.

 

And if you should give

him a startle or scare,

where he was he won’t be

for he’s no longer there,

in a dash and a flash of white tail in the air.

 

© Liz Brownlee

 

Joke:

What’s the difference between a  bunny who runs marathons and a bunny who is a clown?

¡ʎuunɟ ʇᴉq ɐ sᴉ ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ puɐ ʎuunq ʇᴉɟ ɐ sᴉ ǝuO

 

And here’ s a picture of Lola leaping like a bunny!

Sue Hardy-Dawson (besides being a lovely, lovely person and my dear friend), is a Yorkshire born poet, artist, and illustrator, and is widely published in children’s poetry anthologies. She enjoys visiting schools and has provided workshops for the Prince of Wales Foundation for Children and the Arts. Being dyslexic she takes a special interest in encouraging reluctant readers and writers. Her first solo collection, of illustrated poems, Where Zebras Go (Otter-Barry Books) was long-listed for the North Somerset Teachers’ 2017 Book Award and shortlisted for the CLiPPA 2018. Sue has a new collection of shape poems, Apes to Zebras (Bloomsbury) with Roger Stevens and Liz Brownlee, and her second solo collection If I Were Other than Myself (Troika) is due out soon!

The Listening

 

Somewhere inside rock, tree and root

Earth knows the truth about everything

her own truth

of scents, still sounds

where mole and eagle go

one brushing darkness, the other a sky mouth

 

her words are water and wind,

creeping frosts, a cool dawn trickling

over mountains

she may shout storms

out at sea breaking coasts

or simmer with sulking fogs choking lanes

 

but her bones are molten

and her flesh loam, just as her words

are glass runes

on rainbows. She

speaks her truths to the sun

and moon: if you put your ear against soil and stone

 

you can listen to her     warm   heart       beating

hear the sound of our   Earth   Mother   weeping

 

© Sue Hardy-Dawson

 

Thanks, Sue, for this wonderful poem.