16
Poetry for Children
Morag Styles
‘Country Rhimes’ or ‘Fingle-fangles’: What is Poetry for Children?I am tempted to say that there is no such thing as poetry for children. There is plenty of
poetry about children; and some of the best poetry ever written is about childhood; at
some time or other most poets explore that inviting furrow—their own youth and
growing up. A great body of the so-called canon of children’s verse was never intended
for the young at all, but was verse which adults thought suitable for children. The
gatekeepers of the canon are the anthologists.
Of course, poets have written specifically for children, some choosing to divide their
time between their different audiences; others specialising in juvenile poetry. The latter
group has, however, been marginalised by influential editors of the past and present.
Coventry Patmore, writing in The Children’s Garland (1862, subtitled ‘from the best
poets’) firmly states, ‘I have excluded nearly all the verse written expressly for children
and most of the poetry written about children for grown people’ (p. c). Here is Neil Philip
in 1990: ‘I have also been cautious with poems written specially for children, preferring
on the whole work which makes itself available to a young reader without any sense of
talking or writing down’ (my emphasis) (15).
Such views are not uncommon. Poems by Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson,
who never wrote for children, have been collected more frequently in prestigious
anthologies of the last hundred years than work by Stevenson, Lear or Rossetti. Look at
distinguished general anthologies of the nineteenth and twentieth century and consider
the omissions. Where are the poets writing for children? Where are the women? Most
anthologies of the past and present are testimonies to the preferences of elite groups of
academically educated men. Poetry by women, working-class people, ethnic minorities
and those who specialise in writing for the young are often treated as second class. A
large body of the poetry actually favoured by children (so the evidence would suggest)
has been ignored by anthologists. The tension between the improving instincts of adults
and what children choose to read is nowhere more keenly demonstrated than in the
anthologising of verse for the young.
Some of these adult poems have been adopted by children themselves, a healthy trend
which shows young readers’ powerful drive to shape their own literature. Children have
always poached from the adult canon; Kaye Webb’s I Like This Poem (1979), a collection
of the declared favourite poems of children (although, no doubt, a privileged group of