On poetry
As a child, I loved poetry. My first experiences of it were via nursery rhymes and children’s books: Oranges and Lemons, Lynley Dodd’s Hairy McClary from Donaldson’s Dairy, A.A. Milne’s Winne the Pooh. I liked the way the words tripped off my tongue, the shape they made in the air, the fun of anticipating the next rhyme.
As a pre-teen, my knowledge of poetry expanded. I discovered the self-deprecating humour of Pam Ayres, the melodramatic imagery of Robert Frost and the nuggets of wisdom of Rudyard Kipling. I would memorise poems and recite them whenever I thought I could get away with it. I can still recite all of If from memory, and large chunks of The Walrus and The Carpenter, not to mention several others.
Then I hit high school and non-rhyming poetry and it all started to unravel. I was bewildered by this non-rhyming world. I didn’t understand how it worked, or - if poetry didn’t need to rhyme - what counted as not-poetry.
Poetry started to make me feel stupid. I remember being asked simple questions in English exams like ‘what is this poem about’ and not having the faintest clue where to start. There was poem with a line about a girl hiding behind the chrysanthemums, and I answered the question with something along the lines of ‘it’s about a girl in a garden’; it turns out the poem was about death.
And so I’ve left poetry alone for many years, consigning it to the mental ‘things-that-I-do-not-comprehend-but-view-with-deep-suspicion’ box, along with contemporary art featuring urinals.
But this week, I came across a couple of lines from a relatively modern poet. Here they are:
And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind
They’re from Hone Tuwhare’s Rain. It’s an old-ish poem, written in the 1970s I think, and very famous. Even I have heard it before, but I hadn’t truly registered it until recently, when some part of my brain woke up and said, ‘Huh, that’s beautiful’. I went and hunted down the rest of it, which is equally beautiful. The words resonated with me.
So I’ve taken this as a sign - a sign that I need to open myself up to more modern poetry and put away the childish reaction of ‘but if it doesn’t rhyme it’s wrong!’