Too Young For Poetry? No way!

It's ANZAC Day here in Australia today, a sad public holiday. It's cold, wet and windy. A day for poetry if ever there was one. I've been planning to introduce more poetry to the kids for some time now but wasn't really sure how to do it without boring them or freaking them out. After reading a little First World War poetry to myself this morning I decided that although apt they really weren't ready for that kind of emotional carnage! Luckily I happened to stumble on A Poke In the I, a great children's book about 'concrete poetry', at the library yesterday. Do you remember learning about concrete poetry (calligrams) at school? It's that lovely visual poetry that uses a blend of placement, typography and words to convey meaning. You can see Isabella's balloon example in the photo above and some other great examples here. 

Henry found it too hard to contain his poetic muse and dictated the following to me all in one go (he's 5).

Marching With The Band 

Think about marching in your poetic deafness

of lemon drops and sugar.

In your flavoured mouth

poetic things dance to your deafness

Then you begin to feel sleepy and you fall asleep

and taste the deafness

and nobody knows your deafness is dead.

I swear that's just what came out! I just wrote it down and formatted it. Ah, to have the lack of fear that would just let me spew things out like that...



In Praise of Nannies

Images sourced from:

1 the Angry Pre-Med Student 2. tvtropes. org 3. gerlily

As a child I often wondered what it would be like to have a nanny. Not just any nanny mind you - not like those absent-minded nannies in 'Peter Pan' who leave their charges behind in Kensington Gardens - I mean a magical nanny like Mary Poppins, Phoebe Figalily or Nanny McPhee.

From a child's point of view the greatest drawback of parents is surely that they are always so busy - not now darling, in a minute sweetie - whereas a nanny's sole reason for being is to pay attention to you! Imagine if that nanny could also clean up your bedroom with the click of her fingers, take you on outings through chalk drawings or make your pet donkey dance - bliss.

My first nanny-crush was undoubtedly Mary Poppins (of the Julie Andrews variety). Her bottomless carpet-bag, magical umbrella and extremely turned out feet fascinated me. Next came Phoebe Figalily (Juliet Mills) in the the 1970s television show, 'Nanny and the Professor'. Do you remember her? Unlike Mary Poppins, Phoebe Figalily's magic was less showy - no magic umbrella or stick just an uncanny ability to foretell the future.

Nanny McPhee is a recent but very welcome acquaintance. Like Mary and Phoebe she has that wonderfully British ability to remain calm in a crisis and turn seemingly impossible situations to her advantage. I also love the way they empower their charges to come to their own conclusions. All three have an air of mystery about them - where did they come from and how long have they been around? Of course we will never know and perhaps it's not that important anyway. I just can't wait until the wind changes again bringing Mary Poppins back to Melbourne.

Que Sera Sera...

I love the fact that my children are still fearless (unlike their mother). Last weekend we went to visit my sister and her family. While we were there we went down to the beach (tidal river to be exact) where my brother-in-law and his friend had a surf ski. Both kids jumped at the chance to climb aboard especially Bella. Honestly, I have never seen anyone pick up a skill so quickly and there was much talk about how much Bella would enjoy Nippers.

Now we live closer to the mountains than the sea so regular attendance at junior surf-lifesaving school is unlikely but it did lead me to wonder, how much influence does where we grow up have on what we are exposed to and grow to love? If I had not grown up in the country would I have had my own horse and spent many happy hours at pony club and gymkhanas? Probably not. If I had grown up in the city would I have started dancing earlier and kept going longer? Maybe. How do I know that I'm not a fantastic skier if I've never been to the snow?

Perhaps that's the point. If I really wanted to do something chances are I would have done it by now. The story of so many successful individuals is framed by their perserverence in the face of geographical, financial and peer pressures in pursuing their dreams. Sons of doctors who become artists, daughters of mechanics who become lawyers so if Bella is destined to be Australia's next IronWoman I'm sure she'll find a way.

The Enchanted Forest

Recently I had the most vivid sense memory. Do you ever have those? To get to Isabella's school each day we walk across a park. It is your typical Australian public park with a barbeque and tables and chairs, play equipment and lots of gum trees just like those in the nature reserve behind the school. In one corner of the park, however, there is a very different atmosphere and when we walk that way we say we are going through the enchanted forest. The enchanted forest is a stand of very old pine trees with massive trunks and ropey roots.

On the day in question, we were walking through the 'forest' when something about the quality of the light and the smell of dried pine needles crushed underfoot took me straight back to primary school. I remembered all those recesses spent building little cubbie houses with fallen branches thatched with pine needles. I remembered how proud I was of some of those cubbies and how we used to go around admiring each others before returning to our own convinced that ours was the best of all. I'm glad kids still build cubbie houses like we did.