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A child's garden of verses Fantasising, visualising and realising
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They give me no pains in joints I have just come to know, of, but I gamely climbed, turned at the end of a flight, climbed again and thought of a long cool beer. We - my wife and I checked, took in the crowd, then stole furtively to the rear. In these dicey time, backbenchers are relatively safe.
At the head table were Mr. Alles, the moving spirit behind Gateway, the headmaster, Mr. Herath, Jean in a flower-salad saree, Nimal Sanderatne wearing a puckish smile, Dr. Wester Modder, one time big wheel of the Tea Research Institute, and a woman who will forgive me if I cannot place her. I'm terrible with names.
This gathering was not without cause. Outside, fair stood the winds of Asgiriya. Inside, the hum subsided. Nimal rose to tell us of his latest publication. Jean later told of the modern poet's penchant for vers libre and other speakers followed.
Everyone had much to say of the evening's an attraction and, I must say, I found it rather overwhelming. You see, our "evening star" was only ten years old! She is Samantha Modder, a Gateway student, daughter of Wester, and her first collection of poems was being launched.
Her evening
All that introductory speechifying! There sat Samantha in the first row, listening to lashings of praise, people telling of how brilliant she is and doubtless, in her little girl-mind, imagining that she was an over-special sort of person.
I would have been happier if she had set the ball rolling: "Hi! I'm Samantha and this is my Dad and seated over there, laughing into his hands is my brother Arie." It was her evening. She should have featured above all else and even invited Nimal to speak: "Uncle Nimal, I can't believe it. My first book! I hope I deserve it."
You see, on occasions such as this, it is the child that must come into her own. Her childlike appeal should have called the shots. All this said, I will now look at her collection titled The Man Who Walked Around the World and Other Poems.
The collection is at once creative, quite thoughtful in patches, even opinionated at times and yet as natural as mimosa on grass. Samantha has recreated a world in which she wanders - questioning, dreaming, imagining, remarking on and suddenly stopping to say, "Hey, there's a story in my head."
When she did come to the mike, she showed us that all the pretty words of praise had not burrowed deep into her.
She glanced around, saw so many encouraging nods and spoke with an ease that was most homely and sincere. But an uneasy thought did flash into my mind.
She was telling of her brother, her teachers, her parents in a charming yet quite mature way. There was a rather opinionated ring and I tried to imagine her at 15, at 20. Could such a show of success so early be a spoiler in later life? We all know that children blossom in an atmosphere of love and care, but to this has been added this need to hold her up as a prodigy, genius flooding out of every opening petal.
Is this good or bad? Furthermore, she is aware of the lengths her family will go to make her extra special... and I wondered: How many others like her with so many child-dreams to give expression to could have a book as Samantha now has? I don't believe I am wrong in making these observation.
Delightful
The poems are quite delightful.
At six, she wrote:
Fish are yummy things
I know
Swimming, swimming,
Hard and quick.
An observation, of course, straight out of a child's mind. They are "yummy" - tasty too, but in the fishbowl they must keep bustling around. I found in these few lines the genesis of a developing art, and, as she grew, she employed all the words she encountered in the scenarios of home, school, places and spaces.
She is not averse to telling of things she fantasised of, then visualised and finally realised in the lines she constructed. What is more, being the child she is, there had to be that sing-song quality that vastly satisfies her.
Samantha lays out her child's world. No, she does not like love stories (they bore her); and she doesn't like grappling with Shakespeare. Her school books fail to amuse her and she likes poems best of all. ("Books" p.1). The idea that a man can walk around the world in his dreams is quite entertaining (even if he settles for a liquid diet of a barrel of gin), but we see a decided maturing.
She is 9, and the world the man walks around could be the world she wishes to explore (without the gin, of course!). There is a strong travel motif here as well as a sense of restlessness ("The Man Who Walked Around the World" p.2)
Sense of humour
She also does own to a wry sense of humour - whether when playing cricket with her brother (The Game" p.5) or arousing a lazy policeman who is stuffing himself with buns and sliced tomatoes ("Comfortable Constable" p.6) or the tale of the giggly boy who is dumped by his parents for doing just that ("Higgly Piggle" p.12).
What has occupied her most are the amusing and not so amusing things around her. When her room is tidy and her mother thinks it isn't (p.46); visiting the dentist (p.43); a book launch -
"But there were some people
Who were rather out of hand,
Their faces were all wrinkled
And hair white or grey...
(Book launch" p.36)
And her stocky brother ("Flubber" p. 35); her classroom (p.22); the snot in her nose (p.18); and then, with a small smirk of superiority, dictating to the girl who thinks she's the cat's whiskers ("Hey! You're not so Posh' pp. 14-15); telling of the party she's going to have (p.16); and bringing her brother down to earth ("Advice to a Brother" p.20); and her distaste at the fat boy eating non-stop (what he eats is gloriously exaggerated) ("Eat Up" pp. 26-27).
There are so many things that give a child wings. You could fancy seeing new versions of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, and her poems reveal a landscape of warm security, of belonging, and yet in the freedom to be her own person.
I have only one prayer for her - that she will continue to "walk the walk, talk the talk" of the true poet.... and that as she swells, attains her goals, she will hold this first book close to her heart for it is from this rich earth that she will surely spread herself.
..................................
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