by Allie Esiri
For his Aunt Jobiska said, ‘No harm
Can come to his toes if his nose is warm;
And it’s perfectly known that a Pobble’s toes
Are safe, – provided he minds his nose.’
III
The Pobble swam fast and well
And when boats or ships came near him
He tinkedly-binkledy-winkled a bell
So that all the world could hear him.
And all the Sailors and Admirals cried,
When they saw him nearing the further side, –
‘He has gone to fish, for his Aunt Jobiska’s
Runcible Cat with crimson whiskers!’
IV
But before he touched the shore,
The shore of the Bristol Channel,
A sea-green Porpoise carried away
His wrapper of scarlet flannel.
And when he came to observe his feet
Formerly garnished with toes so neat
His face at once became forlorn
On perceiving that all his toes were gone!
V
And nobody ever knew
From that dark day to the present,
Whoso had taken the Pobble’s toes,
In a manner so far from pleasant.
Whether the shrimps or crawfish gray,
Or crafty Mermaids stole them away –
Nobody knew; and nobody knows
How the Pobble was robbed of his twice five toes!
VI
The Pobble who has no toes
Was placed in a friendly Bark,
And they rowed him back, and carried him up,
To his Aunt Jobiska’s Park.
And she made him a feast at his earnest wish
Of eggs and buttercups fried with fish; –
And she said, – ‘It’s a fact the whole world knows,
‘That Pobbles are happier without their toes.’
7 May • You Ain’t Nothing but a Hedgehog • John Cooper Clarke
The performance poet John Cooper Clarke’s witty poem is a rewriting of a blues song, ‘Hound Dog’, famously recorded in 1956 by the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t never pricked a predator
You ain’t no porcupine.
8 May • Why the Bat Flies at Night • Roger Stevens
Like John Cooper Clarke’s reimagining of a hedgehog as a rock ’n’ roll figure, this work by the contemporary poet Roger Stevens gives us a completely new perspective on a familiar animal.
Once, when the moon was as bright as the sun
And the stars lit up the sky
And the day and the night were both as one,
The bat came flying by
The bat flew by fast and furious
And attached to his back with string
Was a basket. The animals were curious
They said, Bat, what is in that thing?
Ah, said the bat, well, this afternoon
I was given a task to do
To take this basket up to the moon
But what’s in it? I haven’t a clue.
But the bat was no long-distance flyer
And he had to lie down for a sleep
So, due to the others’ insistence,
The lion opened the basket to peep
Then all at once from the basket
There came a most terrible sight
A shadow that fell like a dark net
Bringing the blackness of night
And that is why bats rise at twilight
And they sleep through the bright hours of day
Why they chivvy and chase the dark slivers of night
The darkness they let get away
8 May • Impromptu on Charles II • John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
On this day in 1660, Parliament met to restore Charles II to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland. He became known as ‘the Merry Monarch’ because of his enjoyment of the arts, wine and women. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester – often simply called ‘Rochester’ – was a controversial writer of bawdy poems, and a favourite of Charles. However, he pushed his luck too far with this insulting poem, which he is said to have handed to the king himself. Charles was furious, and Rochester was banished from his court.
God bless our good and gracious King
Whose promise none relyes on
Who never said A foolish thing
Nor ever did A wise one.
9 May • What the teacher said when asked: What er we avin for geography, Miss? • John Agard
The Greek astronomer Hipparchus, in the second century bc, was the first person to understand location in terms of longitude and latitude – necessary coordinates for all sea travel and exploration. The student in Agard’s poem, though, journeys by another means, by dreaming his class away.
This morning I’ve got too much energy
much too much for geography
I’m in a high mood
so class don’t think me crude
but you can stuff latitude and longitude
I’ve had enough of the earth’s crust
today I want to touch the clouds
Today I want to sing out loud
and tear all maps to shreds
I’m not settling for river beds
I want the sky and nothing less
Today I couldn’t care if east turns west
Today I’ve got so much energy
I could do press-ups on the desk
but that won’t take much out of me
Today I’ll dance on the globe
In a rainbow robe
while you class remain seated
on your natural zone
with your pens and things
watching my contours grow wings
All right, class, see you later.
If the headmaster asks for me
say I’m a million dreaming degrees
beyond the equator
a million dreaming degrees
beyond the equator
9 May • Mayfly • Mary Ann Hoberman
People have always been fascinated by the brief lives of mayflies. Hatching in vast numbers on warm spring days, these insects often live only for a single day! We might find in the poem a message about the fragility and preciousness of all life.
Think how fast a year flies by
A month flies by
A week flies by
Think how fast a day flies by
A Mayfly’s life lasts but a day
A single day
To live and die
A single day
How fast it goes
The day
The Mayfly
Both of those.
A Mayfly flies a single day
The daylight dies and darkness grows
A single day
How fast it flies
A Mayfly’s life
How fast it goes.
10 May • For my Niece • Kae Tempest
Kae Tempest is a performance poet and rapper, living and working in London. Their poetry, which is direct and modern in style, is nevertheless inspired by poets across the history of English literature.
I hold you in my arms,
your age is told in months.
There’s things I hope you’ll learn.
Things I’m sure that I learned once.
But there’s nothing I can teach you.
You’ll find all that you need.
No flower bends its head to offer
teaching to a seed.
The seed will grow and blossom
once the flower’s ground to dust.
But even so, if nothing else,
one thing I’ll entrust:
Doing what you please
is not the same
as doing what you must.
&n
bsp; 10 May • Brother • Mary Ann Hoberman
This poem by Mary Ann Hoberman feels almost like a tongue twister in its repetitions of ‘bother’ and ‘brother’ so close together.
I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.
But she said don’t be a bother
So I took him to my father
And I said this little bother
Of a brother’s very strange.
But he said one little brother
Is exactly like another
And every little brother
Misbehaves a bit he said.
So I took the little bother
From my mother and my father
And I put the little bother
Of a brother back to bed.
11 May • from Doctor Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was one of the greatest writers in history, though, thanks to Shakespeare, he is remembered as only the second greatest playwright of the Elizabethan age. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is based on a German folk tale about a brilliant young man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and pleasure. In this scene, Faustus is presented by the devil with the mythical Helen of Troy, who was said to be the most beautiful woman ever to have lived. Her abduction led to the Trojan War.
Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies! –
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wittenberg be sack’d;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumèd crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear’d to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa’s azur’d arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour.
11 May • The Selkie Bride • Tony Mitton
The subject of this poem is the mythological selkie – a creature that resembles a seal in the water but a human on land. Legends involving the selkie can be found in Scottish, Irish, and Icelandic folklore. Tony Mitton’s poem tells the story of young Donallan, who falls in love with a selkie.
Young Donallan lived alone
with the sound of the sea and the wind’s wild moan,
and the hiss of the kettle, the sigh of the peat,
with a cat in his lap and a dog at his feet.
Young Donallan spread his net.
He landed the fish that he could get.
He grew his cabbage in a scant croft patch,
and he caulked his boat and he roped his thatch.
On the seventh day of the high Spring tide
His heart grew full and he stretched and sighed.
So he walked the length of the lonely strand
To the chafe of the surf on the soft sea sand.
Young Donallan tuned his ear
to the cry of the gulls on the salt sea air.
But above the birds and the fall of the flood
there rose a sound that swelled his blood.
Down on the rocks a selkie sang,
And he drank the song till his senses rang.
He gazed at the sight of her glimmering there
With her graceful form and her winnowing hair.
He knew the lore and the ways of old
From the talk, and the tales his father told.
So he seized the skin that lay by her side,
Crying, ‘Selkie, I take you to be my bride.’
She begged for the skin, on her bended knee,
for without it she could not return to the sea.
But her eyes were dark and her skin was soft,
and Donallan led her back to his croft.
Young Donallan and his selkie bride
lived in the croft to the tune of the tide,
She stitched his shirt and she baked his bread
And she lay by his side in the old box bed.
She bore him children, one, two, three.
Their eyes were as soft as the seals’ of the sea.
They loved their mother with her gentle ways
But they knew her sigh and her sad sea gaze.
And they felt in their hearts there was something
wrong
for her voice was sweet but she sang no song.
Whenever she soothed them to sleep at night
Her eyes were kind but her lips pressed tight.
It was on a day when the wind was wild
and Donallan was out with the eldest child,
that the Selkie Bride was baking bread
when all of a sudden the youngest said,
‘Early this morning while the family slept
I followed our father out where he crept.
He loosened a stone in the old croft wall
And he took from the hollow a sleek grey caul.
‘He oiled and smoothed that supple skin,
Then he folded it tight and put it back in.
Now tell me, Mother, oh spell to me
the meaning of this mystery.’
But his mother, never a word she said.
She found the skin and she left her bread.
Then she led the children to the edge of the land
where the waters lap at the silver sand.
‘Now, listen, my dears, oh listen to me.
Your mother’s home is here in the sea.
It was here in Spring, at the height of the tide,
Your father took me to be his bride.
‘And though it tear at your mother’s heart,
it’s here on the shore that we must part.’
She shook her skin and she put it on.
Then she fell to the waves and she was gone.
When they told their father, he scarcely stirred.
He gave a sigh, but he spoke no word.
For he knew that a selkie, such as she,
must come at last to her home in the sea.
So Donallan lived in the small thatched croft,
with his children three and their eyes so soft.
But whenever in Spring the tides rose high
And a round moon rode in the cool night sky,
they would hear the music, clear and strong,
the sound of their mother’s selkie song,
and they knew she was near, in the swing of the sea,
where the waters roll and the seal swim free.
And from that time, in the midst of the storm,
they were safe from the waves that spoil and harm.
And whoever was of their selkie brood,
their boats stayed sound and their catch was good.
12 May • Silkie • Dave Calder
This poem by Dave Calder also takes the mythological selkie, spelt here as ‘silkie’, as its subject. The poet here pairs the transformation between human and selkie form with the transition between being awake and falling asleep.
The gulls had quietened on the chimneypots
and in the unending dusk of the summer night
he could hear the sea pushing and pulling at pebbles, in and out, rise and fall,
and when he slid into the sheets they felt
as smooth and cool as slipping into water
down down
until only his head only his nose and eyes
bobbed above water and then
&
nbsp; his body losing all sense of weight so
sleek skinned sinking deeper
into the pulse of the sea breathing
rise and fall, in and out, down down
deep and far the song of whales sounding
When he woke, the sheets were a tangle
of breakers, he lay beached on the bed, his head resting
on the small white sandbank, the gulls wheeling
against the sunlight
12 May • On a Lane in Spring • John Clare
Sonnets usually involve some sort of tension or change of directions, especially in the final couplet. But in Clare’s sonnet on spring there is no such tension. The poem moves harmoniously from natural form to natural form, and ends with a complete image of springtime in a country lane. In this way, Clare uses the form of the sonnet to create an unexpectedly tranquil picture.
A little lane – the brook runs close beside,
And spangles in the sunshine, while the fish glide swiftly by;
And hedges leafing with the green springtide;
From out their greenery the old birds fly,
And chirp and whistle in the morning sun;
The pilewort glitters ’neath the pale blue sky,
The little robin has its nest begun
The grass-green linnets round the bushes fly.
How mild the spring comes in! the daisy buds
Lift up their golden blossoms to the sky.
How lovely are the pingles and the woods!
Here a beetle runs – and there a fly
Rests on the arum leaf in bottle-green,
And all the spring in this sweet lane is seen.
13 May • The Lanyard • Billy Collins
Though Mothering Sunday has been and gone in the UK, Mother’s Day in the USA takes place on the second Sunday in May. The American poet Billy Collins thinks about the impossible debt we owe to our mothers, through a gift he gave his mother: a homemade lanyard. The reference to a ‘French novelist’ and memory is to Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time – a novel in which a bite of a madeleine, a little French cake, brings back a torrent of memories.
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,