Playful Encounters in the Garden of Poetry: Children’s Poetry and Play

• Authors: Kalogirou Tzina
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Poetry is heavily invested with playfulness. Drawing on the most recent critical discourse on children’s poetry, the present study aims to showcase that the significant form of play can be manifested in many ways in children’s poetry and also be traced in poetic language as playful humor and intense verbalplay. For this purpose, a cluster of poems are addressed, poems been found in poetic anthologies for children (“Overheard on a Saltmarsh”), in the street (“Bam Chi Chi La La: London, 1969”) in the playground (“I scream...”) and in single-poet collections (“Jamie Dodgers aren’t the only fruit”, “Skig the Warrior”). All poems reveal some of the essential qualities of children’s poetry and most importantly its overall playful character materialized both in linguistic and conceptual terms. The children’s poem “Come on into my tropical garden” written by the British- C aribbean poet Grace Nichols is closely analyzed as a manifestation of poetry’s playful spirit. The exuberance of its rhetoric and sound, its rhythmical feeling and the rich texture of its verses are conveyed through a well-embodied structure and form. What is more, the poem is thoroughly permeated by play as a core element both in thematics and figurative language. The poet uses and reappropriates the “garden” as a powerful metaphor for children’s poetry, placing the child at the very center of a symbolic natural landscape to celebrate nature’s delights and to exercise her insatiable appetite for play.

Keywords

EN

children’s poetry; play; Huizinga; garden-as-metaphor; Grace Nichols

• Publisher: Oficyna Wydawnicza ATUT – Wrocławskie Wydawnictwo Oświatowe
• Journal: Filoteknos
• Year: 2019
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 98–119

Contributors

author

Kalogirou Tzina

• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

References

• Bland, J. 2015. “Performing Poems in the Primary School” in Werner Delanoy, Maria Eisenmann and Frauke Matz (Eds), Learning with Literature in the EFL Classroom (Anglo- Amerikanische Studien – Anglo-American Studies). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 85–100.
• Brooks, C. 1949/1968. The Well-Wrought Urn. Studies in the Structure of Poetry. London: Methuen.
• Bryan, B., Styles, M. eds. 2013. Teaching Caribbean Poetry. Oxon–New York: Routledge.
• Coats, K. 2013. “The Meaning of Children’s Poetry: A Cognitive Approach”, – International Research in Children’s Literature, 6.2, 127–142.
• Coats, K. 2010. ‘“If it rhymes, it’s funny”: Theories of Humour in Children’s Poetry”. – M. Styles, L. Joy, D. Whitley, eds., Poetry and Childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, 121–9.
• Charles, M. 1977. Rhétorique de la Lecture. Paris: Seuil.
• Chukovsky, K. 1971. From Two to Five. trans. and ed. M. Morton. Foreword by F. C. Sayers. Berkley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press.
• Cumming, R. 2007. “Language play in the classroom: encouraging children’s intuitive creativity with words through poetry”. – Literacy, 41, 2, 93-101. – http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/ education/RLO _Assets/2011/e040/creativity.pdf (2.07.2017).
• Eliot, T.S. 1933. The Use of Poetry and The Use of Criticism. London: Faber and Faber.
• Escudero, M. 2000. “Race, Gender and Performance in Grace Nichols’s The Fat Black Woman’s Poems”. – Journal of International Women’s Studies, 1(2), 12–26. – http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol1/iss2/2 (3.08.2018).
• Elkins, J. 2008. “Writing Moods”. – Z. De Lue, R., E. James, eds., Landscape Theory. New York and London: Routledge, 69–86.
• Genette, G. 1987. Seuils. Paris: Seuil.
• Havelock, E. 1991. “The Oral-Literate Equation: A Formula for the Modern Mind”. – D.R. Olson, N. Torrance, eds., Literacy and Orality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Huizinga, J. 1938/1949. Homo Ludens. A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London–Boston–Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
• Jeffries, L. 2009. “The language of Poems for Children: A Stylistic Case Study”. – J. Maybin, N. Watson, eds., Children’s Literature. Approaches and Territories. Milton Keynes: Palgrave Macmillan, 218–235.
• Maxwell, G. 2016. On Poetry. London: Oberon Books.
• Lubbock, T. 2011. Great Works. 50 Paintings Explored. London: Frances Lincoln,
• Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Müller-Zettelmann, E. 2003. “’Skeleton, Moon, Poet’: Carol Ann Duffy’s Postmodern Poetry for Children”. – A. Michelis, A. Rowland, eds., The Poetry of Carol Ann Duffy. ‘Choosing Tough Words’. Manchester–New York: Manchester University Press, 186–201.
• Nakas, A., Kalogirou, T. 2014. “Patterns of Word and Phrase Repetition as Linguistic Universalia in Folktales”. Narratives across Space and Time: Transmissions and Adaptations (Proceedings of the 15th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research / ISFNR, June 21-27, 2009, Athens). Athens: Academy of Athens / Publications of the Hellenic Folklore Research Center, n. 31, vol. II, 577–596.
• Neira-Piñeiro, M. del R. 2016. “Children as Implied Readers in Poetry Picturebooks: The Adaptation of Adult Poetry for Young Readers”. – International Research in Children’s Literature, 9.1, 1–19.
• Paul, L. 2000. “Coming to ‘sing their being’. The poetry of Grace Nichols”. – B. Lyon Clark, M.R. Higonnet, eds., Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children’s Literature and Culture. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 83–96.
• Pinsent, P. 2016. Children’s Literature (Readers’ Guides to Essential Criticism). London: Palgrave.
• Preminger, A., Brogan, T. V. F., eds. 1993. The New Princeton Encyclopaedia of Poetry and Poetics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Pullinger, D. 2017. From Tongue to Text. A New Reading of Children’s Poetry. London–New York: Bloomsbury.
• Shelley, P. B. 1840. Essays, Letters from Abroad, Fragments. London: Moxon.
• Singer, D. G., Singer, J. 1992. The House of Make- Believe. Children’s Play and the Developing Imagination. Cambridge–Massachusetts–London: Harvard University Press.
• Styles, M. 1998. From the Garden to the Street: Three Hundred Years of Poetry for Children. London: Cassell.
• Styles, M. 2009. “ ‘From the best poets’? Anthologies for children”. – J. Maybin, N. Watson, eds., Children’s Literature. Approaches and Territories. Milton Keynes: Palgrave Macmillan, 235–245.
• Styles, M. 2010. “Introduction”. – M. Styles, L. Joy, D. Whitley, eds., Poetry and Childhood. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books, XI–XVI.
• Wakely-Mulroney, K., Joy, L. 2018. The Aesthetics of Children’s Poetry: A Study of Children’s Verse in English. Oxon–New York: Routledge.
• Warner, M. 2001. “Introduction”. – P. Opie, I. Opie, eds., The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. New York: New York Review Books, IX–XIX.
• Williams, R. 2009. The Poetry Toolkit: The Essential Guide to Studying Poetry. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
• Wimsatt, W. K. 1954. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
• Winnicott, D.W 1971/2005. Playing and Reality. London and New York: Routledge.
• Academy of American Poets 2006. How to Eat a Poem. A Smorgasbord of Tasty and Delicious Poems for Young Readers, edited by the American Poetry and Literacy Project and the Academy of American Poets (with foreword by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser), Mineola, New York: Dover.
• Benson, G., Herbert, C., Chernaik, J., eds. 2006. New Poems on the Underground. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
• Donaldson, J. 2013. Poems to Perform: A Classic Collection chosen by the Children’s Laureate. Illustrated by C. Melinsky. London: Macmillan.
• Duffy, C. A. 2017. Pablo Picasso’s Noël. Illustrated by L. Maupetit. London: Picador.
• Duffy, C. A. 2014. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Christmas Birthday. Illustrated by T. Duxbury. London: Picador.
• Duffy, C. A. 2012. 101 Poems for Children Chosen by Carol Ann Duffy: A Laureate’s Choice. Illustrated by E. Gravett. London: Macmillan.
• Duffy, C. A. 2009. New and Collected Poems for Children. Illustrated by A. Stevenson. London: Faber and Faber.
• Duffy, C. A. 2007. The Hat. Illustrations by D. Whittle. London: Faber and Faber.
• Duffy, C. A. 2003. Overheard on A Saltmarsh: Poets’ Favourite Poems. London: Young Picador.
• Harrold, A.F. 2015. Things you Find in a Poet’s Beard. Illustrated by Ch. Riddell. West Hill, Portishead: Burning Eye Books.
• Hughes, T. 2005. Collected Poems for Children. Illustrated by R. Briggs. London: Faber and Faber.
• Nichols, G. 1988. Come on into my Tropical Garden. Poems for Children. Illustrated by C. Binch. London: A&C Black.
• Nichols, G. 1984.The Fat Black Woman’s Poems. Great Britain: Virago.
• Opie, P., Opie, I., eds. 1959/2001. The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. Introduction by M. Warner, New York: New York Review Books.
• Opie, P., Opie, I. (Eds.) 2000. I Saw Esaw. The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book. Illustrated by M. Sendak. Cambridge: Candlewick Press.
• Perry, R. 2015. Beauty/ Beauty. Hexham: Bloodaxe Books.
• Rosen, M. 2009. Michael Rosen’s A-Z: The Best Children’s Poetry from Agard to Zephaniah. London: Puffin.
• Stevenson, R. L. 1855/2007. A Child’s Garden of Verses. Illustrated by G. Fujikawa. New York–London: Sterling.
• Sweeney, M. 2003. The New Faber Book of Children’s Poems. Illustrations by S. Fanelli, London: Faber and Faber.
• Wakeling, K. 2016. Moon Juice: Poems for Children. Illustrated by E. Brasliņa. Great Britain: The Emma Press.
• Wilson, J. 2012. Green Glass Beads. A Collection of Poems for Girls. London: Macmillan.