Why Poetry Matters

It's Poetry Competition time again at First and SecondBorn's school. The time when parents spend hours searching anthologies for suitably (funny), suitably (short) poems, for their offspring to leaf through with lacklustre expression,
'No Mum, that's not quite what I was thinking of...'
'Grrr.'

Like any grooming exercise it gets somewhat easier with practice. This is our third year in the school, and First and SecondBorn have come to understand they can't avoid it. They might as well put their efforts into finding a poem they don't mind learning off by heart.  This year as I launched into my wellworn annual spiel of why I think poetry matters, they blinked and passed me their choices.
'Move on Mum, we get it'.
And their choices brighten my heart.

Today the International Criminal Court issued its judgement that there is a case to answer by four prominent Kenyans following the post-election violence in 2007. 1200 were killed and 600,000 had to flee their homes. Many have been unable to return.   Having a case to answer obviously doesn't mean you are guilty. But what will cheer many ordinary Kenyans is that prominent people, 'Big Fish', are called to answer to the same laws as the rest, - not something that goes without saying.

So this is twelve year old FirstBorn's choice of poem.

No Enemies?

You have no enemies, you say?

Alas, my friend, the boast is poor;

He who has mingled in the fray

Of duty, that the brave endure,

Must have made foes! If you have none,

Small is the work that you have done.

You've hit no traitor on the hip,

You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,

You've never turned the wrong to right,

You've been a coward in the fight.

Charles MacKay

 

It's not that, as a family, we OFTEN go around dashing cups from perjured lips, but I like the sentiment it matters to stand up for things, despite the cost to yourself.

 

Nine year old SecondBorn goes more for the humour card.  He brightened as he came across his choice, reminding of an ineffably uncomfortable family camel ride this Christmas holidays.

 

The Camel's Lament (exerpt)
Lambs are enclosed where its never exposed.

Coops are constructed for hens;
Kittens are treated to houses well heated,
And pigs are protected by pens.
But a camel comes handy
Wherever its sandy -
Anywhere does for me!

People would laugh if you rode a giraffe,
Or mounted the back of an ox;
Its nobody’s habit to ride on a rabbit,
or try to bestraddle a fox.
But as for a camel, he’s
ridden by families -
Any load does for me!

A snake is as round as a hole in the ground,
And weasels are wavy and sleek;
And no alligator could ever be straighter
Than lizards that live in a creek,
But a camel’s all lumpy
And bumpy and humpy -
any shape does for me.

Some poems reach the parts other language can't reach. Some poems linger and resonate and remind me I'm not alone, even when I feel it.  An acquaintance who runs a book club for people with mental health difficulties, described being invited to a finance meeting of their donor Primary Care Trust to explain why its small budget was a good use of their funding. She was accompanied by a participant in one of the groups, who said, halfway through the officious meeting,
'I'd just like to read a bit of a poem. I keep it with me every day. And when I feel really bad, I read it, and know I'm not alone.'
Carrion Comfort (exerpt)

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

And the room fell silent.

A member of our Quaker meeting in UK was one of the first relief workers into a major concentration camp in Germany after its liberation in 1945. Amidst the mindnumbing horror and tiring mass clearing, sanitation and feeding work of the first few days, he also describes opening a box of essential supplies, into which someone has tucked some lipsticks.  Described the reviving impact that a dab of lipstick had, how for many of the numbed, traumatised women, driven beyond. It seemed to start the process to help them return to themselves.

In a smaller way, in less extreme circumstances, poetry is sometimes like that for me.  May it be so for you too.