I Like This Poem by Clair Wright

It’s October already, and we are well into the new school term. At just nine and seven, the boys are already bringing home their fair share of homework, and like all children, there is always something they would rather be doing. It’s my job, then, to inspire them to do it. Not an easy task.

This week, William brought home a poem with some questions to complete. The poem was a good one, (“Old Flyer” by Nick Toczek– look it up), but William was not enthused. Something about the arrangement of the words on the page, the stanzas, the rhyming, seemed to intimidate him, which manifested itself in sullen uncooperativeness and mutterings about it being a “stupid poem”. 

To coax him along I suggested he look at one of the easier questions, about identifying similes.  This prompted an argument about whether a simile can include “than,” as well as “like” and “as”. Here, my English Literature Masters Degree cut no ice with William, and he was only persuaded when we consulted the highest authority known to a nine-year-old - Google. 

Having completed this question we had gained some momentum, so we had a more enthusiastic discussion about the poet’s comparison of the dragon with a snake and what that suggested. Question three – done. 

The question which had him stumped was about how the poet felt about the dragon.  I tried to persuade William to read the poem out loud, but he wasn’t keen. I should stress here that I am not a natural performer, (I haven’t been near a stage since the Nativity when I was 7), but desperate times call for desperate measures. I climbed onto the kitchen stool and roared out the poem, waving my arms around like the dragon’s wings as it soared through the sky, hissing like the steam from its nostrils, bowing before “His Dragonness”.  

The boys laughed at me, of course, but between snorts William shouted “he thinks the dragon’s cool!” Eureka! 

Without the pressure of being asked questions, we have discovered that the boys quite like poems. I have a favourite anthology called I Like This Poem, which was originally compiled to celebrate the International Year of the Child in 1979. My original copy is so decrepit it has to be kept in an envelope, but the boys have their own, new edition. 

I left the book on the kitchen table, and Oliver climbed up while I’m cooking tea to read to me. At first, he was intimidated. 

“Find the section for six and seven year olds,” I suggested. The first poem was “The Witches’ Spell” from Macbeth. Oliver has heard of Shakespeare, so he looked worried.

“I won’t be able to read this,” he said.

“Try,” I suggested. He did, and he was gripped. His class is reading Roald Dahl’s The Witches so this fits right in, and he was so excited by all the gruesome ingredients dropping into the witches’ cauldron. 

“Can I read it again?” he asked. 

“Oh yes,” I said. “That’s the good thing about poems, you can read them over and over again.” 

So now, William and Oliver are both flicking through the book, finding poems to try. William enjoys reading “In the Ning Nang Nong”, with all the silly sounds performed with gusto. He also likes “The Marog from Mars” about a boy who is secretly an alien.  I have introduced them to “The Night Mail” and they love the train rhythm (they are both big rail enthusiasts) and “Windy Nights” with its galloping hooves.  

They are excited to find “The Centipede’s Song” from James and the Giant Peach, and “Outdoor Song” from Winnie the Pooh, (the one that starts “The more it snows tiddly pom”). 

“Are those poems too?” William asks, doubtfully. He’s still not convinced of my literary credentials.

“Well, it’s a book of poems, so they must be!” declares Oliver, and William is satisfied.

Sharing these poems and seeing the boys’ reactions has got me excited about them all over again. As Michael Rosen writes on the cover of my favourite anthology, “I don’t just LIKE these poems – I LOVE them”.

I Like this Poem edited by Kaye Webb, Puffin, 1979.