Tuesday, 27 March 2012
Poetry Technology, Part Two
As if by magic: I ask out loud for a poetry app (see a previous post) and hey presto, one has been produced. Sounds amazing and with a great story to it too.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Blasts From The Past
I used to work as a bookseller years ago, while I was a student. And, like most booksellers I know, I dreamed of owning a second hand bookshop. Playing fantasy bookshop is, I suppose, a niche activity, which is why there isn't a Nintendo version available. Shame. Luckily, it's one game you can tip, if only slightly, into reality. While I might dream about my specialist shop, with its bow windows, creaky door and gently-tinkling bell, its framed photos of Virginia Woolf and HD, its marmalade cat and its chintz fireside chairs, the joy is that I can start to buy the stock, book-by-book, now. And if my lovely specialist poetry/twentieth-century-British-novelists bookshop fails to materialise, there will still be the books on my own bookshelves at home. Win-win situation.
There is something thrilling about a second-hand bookshop that new, glossy bookshops lack. Big chains are efficient, perfectly pleasant and usually have the book you want in stock, but lack the cosiness and quirk value of little shops. Tiny independents are fabulous - our local one does have a fire, and a chair, and a bookseller who will read stories to The Babe while I browse (heaven) - but they still have an order and a logic to them necessitated by ordering/marketing/best-sellers.
Second-hand bookshops are a glory of randomness. From the distinctive smell of warm paper as you open the door to the stained old chairs and booksellers (the only uniform is a knitted waistcoat or tank top), second-hand bookshops are the nearest thing to a time-machine that exists. Step across the threshold and prepare to be transported to any era you choose. Tat nestles happily with out-of-print wonders, and there is nothing more exciting than opening a musty book to find an enigmatic dedication written in copperplate on the inside cover, or following a trail of pencilled notes throughout the book - these are often stories in themselves, and a testament to the many lives of the book. Or, even more excitingly, as in a recent 1919 campus-novel find of mine, a ticket to an author event, with the inscription in the front of the book revealing that it's first owner was indeed the author himself. You don't get that with a kindle. Or indeed a new copy of the latest Martin Amis.
I live in a big city where second-hand bookshops abound. But the Pram Grandparents have just moved to rural Wales, away from the centre of civilisation. Yet, joy of joys, in the one-street of their new town is a brown cafe with a used books section above. Oh wonder! Upstairs seems to run the whole length of the street - a higgledy-piggledy, up-and-down-steps depository of thousands of books, in shelves that stack high beyond reach.
I have found ancient Tintin volumes for Little Boy, Greek primers from 1904 for First Born, and, ultimate pleasure, two corridors of old Penguin novels for moi, where I bought a whole run of Alice Thomas Ellis novels. The shop is bigger than the town itself, or so it seems, and I am able to leave The Babe and Little Boy happily playing with the Pram Grandparents while I set off to make my way through the maze of tottering books there for an hour or two.
The serendipitious nature of second-hand bookshops never fails to work like a kind of literary I-ching, so that whenever I'm in need of direction or solace in life, I manage to find the book that's been looking for me, virtually glowing on the shelf so that I can't miss it. Last week, feeling burdened with the cares of housewifery, a little book stumbled into my path - an unassuming, slim, plain-bound volume that could easily have gone unnoticed among the bigger, more colourful books at either side. And yet it didn't. It found its way into my hands, weighing no more than a prayer-book. And indeed, that's kind of what it is - a post-First World War book of poetry: The Verse Book Of A Homely Woman by Fay Inchlawn - a Persephone Book in-waiting if ever I've seen one! Ah, the smell of it!
With poems entitled "The Housewife", "On Washing Day" and "To An Old Teapot" it had just the mix of domesticity and transendence that this trammelled housewife needed - a sisterly pat-on-the-back and "chin up!" from across the century, held in the roughened hands of housewives down the years. Beat that Waterstones!
There is something thrilling about a second-hand bookshop that new, glossy bookshops lack. Big chains are efficient, perfectly pleasant and usually have the book you want in stock, but lack the cosiness and quirk value of little shops. Tiny independents are fabulous - our local one does have a fire, and a chair, and a bookseller who will read stories to The Babe while I browse (heaven) - but they still have an order and a logic to them necessitated by ordering/marketing/best-sellers.
Second-hand bookshops are a glory of randomness. From the distinctive smell of warm paper as you open the door to the stained old chairs and booksellers (the only uniform is a knitted waistcoat or tank top), second-hand bookshops are the nearest thing to a time-machine that exists. Step across the threshold and prepare to be transported to any era you choose. Tat nestles happily with out-of-print wonders, and there is nothing more exciting than opening a musty book to find an enigmatic dedication written in copperplate on the inside cover, or following a trail of pencilled notes throughout the book - these are often stories in themselves, and a testament to the many lives of the book. Or, even more excitingly, as in a recent 1919 campus-novel find of mine, a ticket to an author event, with the inscription in the front of the book revealing that it's first owner was indeed the author himself. You don't get that with a kindle. Or indeed a new copy of the latest Martin Amis.
I live in a big city where second-hand bookshops abound. But the Pram Grandparents have just moved to rural Wales, away from the centre of civilisation. Yet, joy of joys, in the one-street of their new town is a brown cafe with a used books section above. Oh wonder! Upstairs seems to run the whole length of the street - a higgledy-piggledy, up-and-down-steps depository of thousands of books, in shelves that stack high beyond reach.
I have found ancient Tintin volumes for Little Boy, Greek primers from 1904 for First Born, and, ultimate pleasure, two corridors of old Penguin novels for moi, where I bought a whole run of Alice Thomas Ellis novels. The shop is bigger than the town itself, or so it seems, and I am able to leave The Babe and Little Boy happily playing with the Pram Grandparents while I set off to make my way through the maze of tottering books there for an hour or two.
The serendipitious nature of second-hand bookshops never fails to work like a kind of literary I-ching, so that whenever I'm in need of direction or solace in life, I manage to find the book that's been looking for me, virtually glowing on the shelf so that I can't miss it. Last week, feeling burdened with the cares of housewifery, a little book stumbled into my path - an unassuming, slim, plain-bound volume that could easily have gone unnoticed among the bigger, more colourful books at either side. And yet it didn't. It found its way into my hands, weighing no more than a prayer-book. And indeed, that's kind of what it is - a post-First World War book of poetry: The Verse Book Of A Homely Woman by Fay Inchlawn - a Persephone Book in-waiting if ever I've seen one! Ah, the smell of it!
With poems entitled "The Housewife", "On Washing Day" and "To An Old Teapot" it had just the mix of domesticity and transendence that this trammelled housewife needed - a sisterly pat-on-the-back and "chin up!" from across the century, held in the roughened hands of housewives down the years. Beat that Waterstones!
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Children Love Poetry
Children are a natural audience for poetry. Sound, rhythm, rhyme, imagery, metaphor, metre - it's all playful, and play is a child's medium. So it's not surprising that children love poetry. Breakfast times in our house are sometimes accompanied by the soundtrack of Little Boy reeling off jokes from a giant joke book. Can be torturous. Recently though, this has been replaced by limericks from his Edward Lear compendium - he cracks up after every one, and listening to "There was a young lady whose chin/ resembled the point of a pin..." is much more easy on the ears than the latest offering from the Bumper Book of Kids' Jokes Volume III. Limericks seem to appeal to his sense of the absurd, and satisfy an instinctive need for rhythm and rhyme. Within a day of getting the book, he had raced up to his room, found pen and paper and attempted a couple of his own. Any book that inspires children to create spontaneous poetry has to be a winner.
One of my own favourites as a child was Spike Milligan's nonsense verse. Even now I'd find it hard to resist a poem which starts "On the Ning Nang Nong where the cows go bong". There's something deliciously subversive about these poems, too. Often the target of a poem is a usually-esteemed adult: "Through every nook an every cranny/The wind blew in on poor old granny." Cue lots of sniggers. And of course, these poems beg to be read aloud, which enriches the joy of playful language.
Another read-aloud favourite here is Dr Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say with it's one-after-the-other, increasingly-tricky tongue twisters, accompanied by gloriously bizarre illustrations, and peopled by characters such as the Fuddnuddler Brothers, "who like to pile each on the heads of the others." More than once, this book's been whipped from my hands with an excited "Can I read it?" Far more fun than The Cat In The Hat
But it doesn't all have to be silly stuff. The most beloved book here contains a collection of poets that include Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Blake, Byron, Ted Hughes, Larkin, Longfellow, Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth and WB Yeats. It's a children's collection, but not a worthy one. The chosen poems are not the usual suspects, and range from tiny couplets to longer narrative poems. There's a range of tone too, with one starting "Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-Toast/ Bought an old castle complete with a ghost", and another, "The two executioners stalk along..." (Hardy of course - what did you expect!) It's The Usborne Book Of Poetry, a book of exquisite loveliness. In every childhood, it seems, there is a well-remembered book that is more than just the sum of its contents. It is usually hardbacked, with pages that crackle when you turn them, and pictures so vivid, or so whimsical, that you're immediately transported to that world. Often too, it seems, the content is strange and maybe just out of intellectual reach - a book which promises some treasures yet to come, a world of possibilities just beyond understanding. This is such a book. Its beautiful tactile cover is the colour of Wedgewood china, and embossed with looped silver writing and fern leaves. In the centre is an oval of colour - a painted tiger, looking straight into the reader's eyes and enticing you to enter. Inside, beyond the bright yellow endpapers, each slightly glossy page is washed with colour, and brought to life by magical illustrations that have an other-worldly quality. It feels like a book found in an old junk shop in a story about magic and adventure. As an object it is magical, and as an anthology it opens a world of mystery, tomfoolery and wonderful wordplay. Children love poetry, and with poetry books as fabulous as these, there's a whole lotta lovin' going on.
One of my own favourites as a child was Spike Milligan's nonsense verse. Even now I'd find it hard to resist a poem which starts "On the Ning Nang Nong where the cows go bong". There's something deliciously subversive about these poems, too. Often the target of a poem is a usually-esteemed adult: "Through every nook an every cranny/The wind blew in on poor old granny." Cue lots of sniggers. And of course, these poems beg to be read aloud, which enriches the joy of playful language.
Another read-aloud favourite here is Dr Seuss's Oh Say Can You Say with it's one-after-the-other, increasingly-tricky tongue twisters, accompanied by gloriously bizarre illustrations, and peopled by characters such as the Fuddnuddler Brothers, "who like to pile each on the heads of the others." More than once, this book's been whipped from my hands with an excited "Can I read it?" Far more fun than The Cat In The Hat
But it doesn't all have to be silly stuff. The most beloved book here contains a collection of poets that include Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Blake, Byron, Ted Hughes, Larkin, Longfellow, Andrew Marvell, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Wordsworth and WB Yeats. It's a children's collection, but not a worthy one. The chosen poems are not the usual suspects, and range from tiny couplets to longer narrative poems. There's a range of tone too, with one starting "Colonel Fazackerly Butterworth-Toast/ Bought an old castle complete with a ghost", and another, "The two executioners stalk along..." (Hardy of course - what did you expect!) It's The Usborne Book Of Poetry, a book of exquisite loveliness. In every childhood, it seems, there is a well-remembered book that is more than just the sum of its contents. It is usually hardbacked, with pages that crackle when you turn them, and pictures so vivid, or so whimsical, that you're immediately transported to that world. Often too, it seems, the content is strange and maybe just out of intellectual reach - a book which promises some treasures yet to come, a world of possibilities just beyond understanding. This is such a book. Its beautiful tactile cover is the colour of Wedgewood china, and embossed with looped silver writing and fern leaves. In the centre is an oval of colour - a painted tiger, looking straight into the reader's eyes and enticing you to enter. Inside, beyond the bright yellow endpapers, each slightly glossy page is washed with colour, and brought to life by magical illustrations that have an other-worldly quality. It feels like a book found in an old junk shop in a story about magic and adventure. As an object it is magical, and as an anthology it opens a world of mystery, tomfoolery and wonderful wordplay. Children love poetry, and with poetry books as fabulous as these, there's a whole lotta lovin' going on.
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