In The Beginning There Was The Word

Today write about the first time words profoundly affected you. Describe the situation, what led up to it, the moment of the encounter, your physical reaction, and something else that was taking place in the same setting but had nothing to do with your experience. Feel free to allow your imagination to supply whichever of these elements you can't recall. You might try this as a poem.

Oh, a poem, I don't think so... erm... drawing a bit of a blank today, am writing early as it's my turn to take the boys to karate so will be in late, and then there'll be a flurry of bath, reading, spelling, story, poem, kisses, lights out, my bath, CSI, chapter of book and lights out before 10.30. So writing early, isn't seeming to work. Too much mundane stuff going on in the brain. Oh well, must try. Here goes. Oh no, think the Air Force are invading, two giant helicopters just gone over so low I could see the men inside. Squaddies! Used to hold much allure. Now I see they are just spotty yobs. I'm getting right off the point again...


Words, and accents, have held great allure for me since I was tiny. Elocution lessons with Ursula Aggio (great name, see?) at the end of the street introduced me to poetry at just four or five. Ian Serralier, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hillaire Belloc, Eleanor Farjeon... the pictures they conjured up were magical. "We built a ship upon the stairs, all made of the back bedroom chairs, and filled it full of sofa pillows, to go a-sailing on the billows." Why so many chairs in a bedroom? Didn't their mothers shout at them for using the sofa pillows? Why pillows and not cushions?

The words continued to amuse and beguile me throughout my childhood. A deep love of Enid Blyton grew when I discovered my sister's Famous Five collection. Here was a delightfully old-fashioned writer who knew how to use the English language and who wasn't afraid of a long word or two. No simplistic descriptions here. Now, of course, we cringe at the stereotyped swarthy gypsies, in need of a wash; the narrow-eyed baddies with -gosh- regional accents, using slang. The words conjured up the English countryside at its best - conversational birdsong; rosy-cheeked farmer's wives. The adventures, the friendship, the language of an era forgotten - gosh! I say! George, old boy! Timmy, you darling! So much more expressive than my contemporaries' terms - 'ellish, cushty, cool. Ugh, made me shudder then, still do.

An English teacher, Miss Brewis, loved poetry and passed out pristine copies of The Sheldon Book of Verse. She read aloud and had us chanting the stanzas like mantras. Daniel in the Lion's Den, Hiawatha, The Lady of Shalott. But best of all was this:

Cargoes, by John Masefield

Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Tpoazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road rail, pig-lead
Firewood, iron-ware and cheap tin trays.

This poem, those words, mystical, dreamy, exotic, smacking of turquoise seas, unfurling silken sails, flying fish and crescent moons. The harsh contrast to the mundane, unpleasant sight of the familiar made me realise that words could take you away. Words could conjour magic from your mind. I was lost. I still am.

One day, twenty years ago, when having a day in bed with a cold - a day off from school aged about fourteen - I was presented with the radio, tuned to Radio 4, and a new book of poetry for older children - Delights and Warnings. I vividly remember hot lasagne and cold iceberg lettuce on a plate for lunch. Between the morning story, afternoon play, daily service (did we have FM in the '80s?) I read poems like Kubla Khan I spent a day in Xanadu, and with the forsaken merman, and with Ariel fathoms deep, and studying dragons close up. This day stands out in my mind, I relished the words, I studied the syntax, I committed whole chunks of text to memory. The house was quiet, just me, the radio and my poems. Always a serious child.

More recently I have found the same wonder in the simple, spare writing of Anita Shreve. The beauty of a perfect phrase - it stops me in my tracks and I have to go back and re-read that phrase time and time again. I marvel at a mind that would put such perfect words together, that would describe something so aptly with often so unusual a string of words.

I have never had any aspirations to write poetry, have never tried. I just don't know enough about the mechanics of its form. It's like learning a new language. I don't want to learn the past anterior or the gerund. I want to speak the words, try them out. While I still have much to learn about grammar and punctuation, writing things like this allows me to pour out the words in my head, to revel in the beauty of our language.

I still have the Sheldon Book of Verse, the cover's peeled away, it's dog-eared and the pages have yellowed over the years, but it's a precious thing (stolen from the English cupboard under the stairs by Room 3). I think I'll read from it to Henry tonight, something simple, see if I can start that spark smouldering.