We knew them all, the one
about a girl called Betty who fell off a chair at a party, or little Willie who
was regularly quoted to us because when he woke up … ‘no grumbling was heard
for he jumped out of bed as bright as a bird.’
The one I loved most of
all was the one about the raindrop. As it dripped down the window pane it turned
into a little man who proceeded to chase the other drops before him until they
gathered in one large pool on the window sill. As she rhymed out the words, my
mind’s eye could only see the tiny sparkling liquid man alive and talking to
me, telling me I should be doing something with my day instead of staring at
him. I always argued back that if he hadn’t made the day so dark, I would be
out running through the fields.
Before she died, I asked
her to write them out for me and I still have the blue-lined pages with her
achingly familiar handwriting: that perfect cursive of her time. I have since
passed them onto the next generation so they too can teach their own children
when the time comes. She was my first teacher of the colour of words.
Albert Einstein once said that: Imagination is more important than knowledge.
For knowledge is limited,
whereas imagination embraces the
entire world… Children never have to learn this. They are the consummate
holders of the ability to form images. They come into the world
with a blank page and write upon it whatever they wish. They play with language
in the same way they play with rattles or balls: throwing words around, shaking
them to see what noise they might produce. They become sound even before their
tongues find a way around their first syllable.
They find poems
everywhere. In the discovery of how their hands move, in the way the sunlight
falls on a table, the chase of their own shadow. Later they love more than
anything else the inherent poetry in nursery rhymes; I spy games, Imagination
games.
Give them a word and
they’ll take them on an adventure. They will take a ladder to the sky to bring
down the wind. They will sail upon the sea of the kitchen tiles. A spoon, a
pair of gloves, are all props for knights and scuba divers, astronauts. It is
where poetry comes from.
One of the most
satisfying jobs for me is tapping into that imagination. As part of Poetry
Ireland’s Writers in Schools’ Scheme I get the opportunity to go around the country
encouraging children from four years of age to eighteen, to expand whatever
vast world of imagination they have within them.
I bring my bag of tricks
and they cannot wait each week to see what I will pull from it. It is usually
an object that they cannot easily recognise and upon which they will build a
story. Once they understand that there is no right or wrong way to respond,
that their answer is as unique as their fingerprints, then it opens up a treasure
trunk of all those undiscovered worlds and they are off. One tells me it’s a
giant pear, for another it becomes a witch’s cottage; someone else will can see
the old skin of a rattle snake, a leather belt, an overripe banana.
Children are people who
live in a land where the seen and unseen happily live together. They understand
the mysterious nature of writing. Take away the confines of a ruled copy and an
eraser and they can take the story anywhere. Nothing gives me greater
satisfaction than to see a child who has not shone academically to suddenly surprise
themselves and their teachers (even more) with the stories they can conjure up.
They grow in confidence and I have heard teachers tell me that it is the first
time they realised that there was a well of untapped creativity within the
child.
A teacher who continues
to nurture that discovery releases the child into a magical world that helps
them grow in esteem and armed with so many stories they can become anything
they want.
Many countries have
recognised the importance of fostering this part of the brain and from
Australia to the USA there has been investment in having a Children’s Laureate.
Ireland is no exception and our Laureate (Laureate na nÓg) has been in
existence since 2010. According to its website, ‘it was established to engage young people with high quality
literature and to underline the importance of children’s literature in our cultural
and imaginative life.’ This
year’s holder of the title, Sarah Crossan, is a very strong advocate for
children’s poetry. It is her aim to encourage all children to write; to become
the best poets they can be. She believes that by doing this it will sustain us,
nurture us and help us survive.
She has
seen for herself that young readers will embrace poetry if they’re given the
chance. She is brimming with new ideas of how to encourage teachers and
students to have a positive response to it. She is working with Irish poets and
performance poets across the world, getting them into communities where
children are more vulnerable. She aims to create a social media campaign where she
gets well-known people in Irish culture to recite their favourite poems and
talk about poetry.
One of her initiatives
already has been the #WeAreThePoets project. This was a partnership between the Republic
of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the hope of encouraging children of all ages
to use poetry as a way of expression.
And all across the world there are people diligently
encouraging children to be creative. I know of one young teacher in Colorado
who is passionate about doing this, in a school where children struggle with
day-to-day living. She is the bread to their souls in the way school dinners
nourish their little bodies. She is not alone in her commitment.
There
are magazines, and blogs and websites all encouraging children and young
people’s creativity. Under the superb aegis of Mark Ulyseas, Live Encounters is a perfect example of
this commitment. To dedicate, not one, but two issues to the imagination of
those special creators is inspired. With its beautifully produced photography
it gives an outlet to so many children who would not normally receive such a
platform. It brings home to me the belief that that there is still light
in this, sometimes, dark world where words are a devalued currency.
There is
no more fitting way of celebrating its ninth birthday than with the songs of
children. May it continue to grow and thrive.
© Geraldine Mills 2019
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