Quite out of the blue, while I was under pressure on a few writing deadlines, I started hearing children’s poems in my head and before I knew it I was dashing down verses and having some fun — now there’s bound to be some psychology of avoidance in here, I hate deadlines and I always run myself up against them and always get stressed and annoyed with myself and draft and redraft things I’m working on. But I’ve never written children’s poems before. Now, I am working on an exciting new development at Salt — we’re launching a new children’s list in 2010 and it may be that somewhere, in the back of my mind, all the nonsense verse I play around with when talking to my children just spilled out into something new. Here’s a sample of what I’ve drafted:
Old Ben Turpin
Old Ben Turpin can tweak the stars
and bend his fingers back like this.
He can turn one blind eye away from the other
And look in to his skull for juices.Old Ben Turpin has a complete disregard
for consequences, to the extent that
He yearns for his mattress-life and sleeps
All the days he musters. He dreams of you.Old Ben Turpin is no fool, he brings his shopping
Home in a cloth-covered cart drawn by donkeys. They have no smiles.
He has a beard for a weapon.
He has a bad heart whose clinkers are cooling fast. They click.Old Ben Turpin knows you, all right. He knows your feet.
He knows your knees. Your hips. Your pumping lungs.
He has plans for you that mean meat stew.
He has a few deliveries to make. He’ll come back later.Old Ben Turpin is a friend of your mum’s
Especially when it comes to shopping for ingredients.
Ears. Nose. Lips. Tongue. Chocolate-coated finger tips.
He’s counting on you for quality. He expects good things.Chop, chop. Chop, chop. Old Ben Turpin
Has been mean to you. He totally meant to saw you up
and feed some snippets to his dogs. Who smiled and yapped a lot.
If you see him, spit into the wind and say “Take the West road home!”
