Green Glass Beads Read online

  Contents

  Foreword by Jacqueline Wilson

  Friends

  Me & You Mandy Coe

  Tunbridge Wells Fleur Adcock

  Friends Elizabeth Jennings

  Sporty People Wendy Cope

  Prior Knowledge Carol Ann Duffy

  Sassenachs Jackie Kay

  It Is a Puzzle Allan Ahlberg

  Summer Romance Jackie Kay

  I’m Nobody! Who Are You? Emily Dickinson

  Family

  Sleep, Baby, Sleep Anon.

  New Baby Jackie Kay

  My Baby Brother’s Secrets John Foster

  Balloons Sylvia Plath

  Sister in a Whale Julie O’Callaghan

  Human Affection Stevie Smith

  The Housemaid’s Letter Clare Bevan

  Sidcup, 1940 Fleur Adcock

  Sensing Mother Mandy Coe

  Daddy Fell into the Pond Alfred Noyes

  Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers Adrienne Rich

  Uncle Edward’s Affliction Vernon Scannell

  Grandmamma’s Birthday Hilaire Belloc

  Indifference Harry Graham

  Your Grandmother Carol Ann Duffy

  Rooty Tooty Carol Ann Duffy

  Grandpa’s Soup Jackie Kay

  Nymphs, Mermaids, Fairies, Witches – and One Giantess

  Overheard on a Saltmarsh Harold Monro

  from Prothalamion Edmund Spenser

  Sabrina Fair John Milton

  The Mermaid Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Merman Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Wish Mandy Coe

  The Girl Who Could See Fairies Marian Swinger

  The Spider Clare Bevan

  A Fairy Went a-Marketing Rose Fyleman

  The Fairy’s Song William Shakespeare

  The Fairies William Allingham

  Thrice Toss These Oaken Ashes in the Air Thomas Campion

  The Old Witch in the Copse Frances Cornford

  Fire, Burn; and Cauldron, Bubble William Shakespeare

  The Giantess Carol Ann Duffy

  Clothes

  My Sari Debjani Chatterjee

  My Hat Stevie Smith

  Purple Shoes Irene Rawnsley

  Red Boots On Kit Wright

  Warning Jenny Joseph

  Birds and Animals

  The Prayer of the Little Ducks Carmen Bernos de Gasztold, translated from the French by Rumer Godden

  A Melancholy Lay Marjory Fleming

  The Swallow Christina Rossetti

  The Owl and the Pussy-Cat Edward Lear

  The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer Jackie Kay

  The Singing Cat Stevie Smith

  The Song of the Jellicles T. S. Eliot

  The Cat and the Moon W. B. Yeats

  My Cat Jeoffry Christopher Smart

  The Tyger William Blake

  A Sonnet on a Monkey Marjory Fleming

  The Cow Robert Louis Stevenson

  Cow Ted Hughes

  The Blessing James Wright

  A Small Dragon Brian Patten

  Toy Dog Carol Ann Duffy

  A Garden of Bears U. A. Fanthorpe

  Animals Sharon Thesen

  School

  Halfway Street, Sidcup Fleur Adcock

  St Gertrude’s, Sidcup Fleur Adcock

  A Poetry on Geometry Ruhee Parelkar

  Inside Sir’s Matchbox John Foster

  Dream Team Frances Nagle

  Make It Bigger, Eileen! Joseph Coelho

  The New Girl Clare Bevan

  Mrs Mackenzie Gillian Floyd

  The Day After Wes Magee

  Squirrels and Motorbikes David Whitehead

  The Fairy School under the Loch John Rice

  We Lost Our Teacher to the Sea David Harmer

  Ms Fleur Mary Green

  Changed Dave Calder

  Teacher Carol Ann Duffy

  St Judas Welcomes Author Philip Arder Philip Ardagh

  Birth and Death

  You’re Sylvia Plath

  Morning Song Sylvia Plath

  Drury Goodbyes Fleur Adcock

  Not Waving but Drowning Stevie Smith

  Song Christina Rossetti

  Remember Christina Rossetti

  Fidele’s Dirge William Shakespeare

  Stop All the Clocks, W. H. Auden

  Break, Break, Break Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Ariel’s Song William Shakespeare

  The Stranger Walter de la Mare

  Children

  A Song about Myself John Keats

  What Are Little Girls . . . Adrian Henri

  The Boy Actor Noel Coward

  The Adventures of Isabel Ogden Nash

  maggie and milly and molly and may E. E. Cummings

  Equestrienne Rachel Field

  Brendon Gallacher Jackie Kay

  If No One Ever Marries Me Laurence Alma-Tadema

  Colouring In Jan Dean

  Amanda! Robin Klein

  Halo Carol Ann Duffy

  Good Girls Irene Rawnsley

  Women

  Minnie and Winnie Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Tarantella Hilaire Belloc

  Unwilling Country Life Alexander Pope

  Annabel-Emily Charles Causley

  The Ice Wilfrid Gibson

  The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women Anon.

  Love

  The Janitor’s Boy Nathalia Crane

  Romance Robert Louis Stevenson

  Expecting Visitors Jenny Joseph

  The Twelve Days of Christmas Anon.

  Dear True Love U. A. Fanthorpe

  Indoor Games near Newbury John Betjeman

  A Birthday Christina Rossetti

  from The Princess Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  The Passionate Shepherd to His Love Christopher Marlowe

  Love You More James Carter

  How Do I Love Thee? Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Sally in our Alley Henry Carey

  Renouncement Alice Meynell

  A Quoi Bon Dire Charlotte Mew

  As I Walked Out One Evening W. H. Auden

  Sonnet 18 William Shakespeare

  Stories

  La Belle Dame Sans Merci John Keats

  The Song of Wandering Aengus W. B. Yeats

  The Jumblies Edward Lear

  On St Catherine’s Day Charles Causley

  The Lady of Shalott Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  Fruit and Flowers

  This Is Just to Say William Carlos Williams

  from The Old Wives’ Tale George Peele

  Given an Apple Elizabeth Jennings

  Moonlit Apples John Drinkwater

  Millions of Strawberries Genevieve Taggard

  from Goblin Market Christina Rossetti

  What Is Pink? Christina Rossetti

  Time of Roses Thomas Hood

  Lilies Are White Anon.

  Daffodils William Wordsworth

  Foxgloves Ted Hughes

  Spring Song William Shakespeare

  Loveliest of Trees A. E. Housman

  Time Mary Ursula Bethell

  Places

  I Remember, I Remember Thomas Hood

  Cottage Eleanor Farjeon

  The Lake Isle of Innisfree W. B. Yeats

  The Way through the Woods Rudyard Kipling

  Adlestrop Edward Thomas

  The Counties Carol Ann Duffy

  Rainbows, Moons and Stars

  Spell to Bring a Smile John Agard

  My Heart Leaps Up William Wordsworth

  Above the Dock T. E. Hulme

  Lemon Moon Beverly McLoughland

  The Moon Landing James Carter

  Where Am I? Wendy Cope

  The Heavenly City Stevie Smith

  The More Loving One W. H. Auden

&nb
sp; When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer Walt Whitman

  Index of First Lines

  Index of Poets

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  There was a craze for children’s talent competitions when I was a little girl. My mum was very keen for me to take part, though I was an agonizingly shy child, who simply wanted to curl up in an armchair and read a book. I didn’t possess any obvious talents. I couldn’t sing in tune. I couldn’t manage so much as ‘Chopsticks’ on the piano. I had never had ballet or tap lessons so I couldn’t dance. However, as I said, I loved reading, so I was given a poetry book, encouraged to learn a long poem, and then told to recite it on stage. I was taught to speak slowly and clearly and do appropriate gestures, while wearing my party frock. A shiver of horror runs through me now at the very thought. However, the one wondrous thing about this terrible ordeal was that I learned many poems. Some of them I’d sooner forget. They weren’t poems at all; they were twee rhymes. I was encouraged to lisp dreadful verses, like:

  I’m sitting on the doorstep

  And I’m eating bread and jam

  And I isn’t crying really

  Though it feels as if I am.

  Things perked up a little when I was given an A. A. Milne collection, though I still try hard to block out the memory of reciting ‘The King’s Breakfast’ at the end of Clacton Pier when I’d drunk several glasses of water and then was too shy to tell the talent-contest manager I was desperate to go to the loo.

  Somehow my mum still felt I needed to be encouraged, and she sent me to elocution lessons. Suddenly I found myself learning real poems, taught by a retired teacher with a passion for Shakespeare. I learned chunks of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It when I was seven or so. I doubt I understood one word in ten, but I loved the sound of the language, the rhythm of the lines, the singing of the words inside my head. I realized you didn’t always have to know precisely what was going on to like a poem.

  I’ve included several Shakespeare poems in this anthology, and some quite challenging poetry – but don’t worry if you can’t always understand everything straight away. Sometimes you have to read a poem many times to tease out every single meaning. But there are lots and lots of fun, easy poems too that you can gulp down happily in one bite. In fact, I like to think this anthology is like a very good restaurant. It’s got a very large menu, and every dish is carefully prepared and presented as beautifully as possible. You’ll hopefully love some things, like many, and maybe wrinkle your nose at a few.

  The joy for me is that it’s my anthology, and I love every single poem in this book. I think my favourite is probably ‘Overheard on a Saltmarsh’ by Harold Monro. I first heard it at school in Year Four. Up till then I’d thought most poems had to have a particular pattern, mostly verses of four lines. I didn’t know you could have a poem that was a conversation between two people – and interesting magical people at that, a nymph and a goblin. The nymph has some green glass beads, and the goblin desperately wants them. I totally understood. I’ve always loved jewellery (I’m the woman who often wears a ring on every finger and has bangles clanking all the way up her arm). I saw those green glass beads glittering in my mind’s eye. I ached to possess them too. I muttered green glass beads on my way to school, as if they were a magic spell.

  I like magical poems and there are plenty in this book, including several that really are magic spells. I love poems about mermaids and fairies and witches – and I’ve included a wonderfully strange poem about a giantess by one of my favourite modern writers, the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. There are lots of women poets in this book because this is a special anthology for girls – but many male poets are included too.

  There are also three child poets. Ruhee Parelkar wrote a poem about geometry when she was six, Nathalia Crane wrote a love poem about the janitor’s boy when she was nine and I’ve included two poems by the wondrous little Marjory Fleming, who wrote fantastic but sometimes unintentionally funny poetry in the early nineteenth century, when she was very little. I especially like her ‘Sonnet on a Monkey’, which starts:

  O lovely O most charming pug

  Thy graceful air and heavenly mug

  And finishes:

  His noses cast is of the roman

  He is a very pretty weoman

  I could not get a rhyme for roman

  And was obliged to call it weoman.

  I think we’ve all had that trouble, trying to write a poem. I’m not very good at writing poems myself, though I wrote a great many when I was a teenager. But there are some poems that I feel I might have written, if only I had talent enough. One poem that really speaks to me – and to millions of others – is ‘Warning’ by Jenny Joseph, with its famous starting lines: ‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat.’

  It has inspired special shops that only sell purple items and a society for ladies of a certain age who visit art galleries and museums and theatres wearing purple with outrageous red hats. I was once lucky enough to meet Jenny Joseph in a bookshop, and I couldn’t help being a little disappointed to see that though she is an old woman now she was dressed in elegant tasteful beige.

  The ‘Clothes’ section of this anthology is a short but special one – the longest sections are ‘Family’ and ‘Birds and Animals’. I’ve tried to choose a great variety of creatures, both real and imaginary – but there are six cat poems. I’m sorry, I just love cats. I have two: Jacob, who is grey and white and utterly gorgeous, and Thomas, who is black and slinky with enormous green eyes.

  There are some very short poems and also a couple of very long poems. My English teacher at secondary school, Miss Pierce, read us the whole of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and I was utterly enchanted and set about learning it by heart (though I can only manage a couple of verses now). I found ‘Goblin Market’ in a little crimson leather-bound book in my grandma’s cupboard, tucked behind her sewing basket and her box of toffees. I loved this weird story of the goblins and their fruit, and clearly so did she, because when she was dying she asked if it could be buried with her. But she had a mysterious little smile on her face. She didn’t usually like poetry at all, so perhaps the little book had been given to her by a long-ago sweetheart.

  There’s a satisfyingly thick section of love poetry in the anthology. That’s the wonderful thing about poetry – you can nearly always find a poem to chime with a particular mood. If you’re feeling very sad and sorry for yourself, it’s just the time to read melancholy poems. If you’re feeling fond of your friends and family, there are selections to make you smile. If you’re fed up with your baby brother yelling or your mum nagging at you, then you’ll find poems that echo your feelings. If you’re feeling very lonely, then Emily Dickinson will be comforting.

  I’ve tried hard to include some funny poems too. I think my favourite funny poem is Philip Ardagh’s piece about a dreadful school visit. I guarantee it will make any children’s author shriek with laughter. Teachers come in all shapes and sizes, as I’ve shown in my ‘School’ section. I do hope you have a teacher who really loves poetry and chats to you about it and reads it aloud beautifully (not in a special strange sing-song voice). If so, you’ll probably love poetry too. But if not, and you think most poetry is silly rubbish that you can’t understand, please give the poems in the book a chance. Maybe try reading them aloud to yourself. They’re all my special favourites, but they won’t necessarily be yours too. Read as many anthologies as you can – and then maybe write and tell me your favourites.

  Jacqueline Wilson

  FRIENDS

  Me & You

  The long-legged girl who takes goal-kicks

  is me,

  I loop my ‘j’ and ‘g’s.

  twiddle my hair

  and wobbled a loose tooth

  through History all yesterday afternoon.

  The small shy boy who draws dragons

  is you.

  You can multiply,

  make d
elicious cheese scones

  and when my tooth finally

  falls out and I cry in surprise,

  you hand me a crumpled tissue.

  I will be an Olympic athlete,

  Win two bronze medals.

  You will be a vet with gentle hands

  Who gets cats to purr and budgies speak.

  We don’t know this yet

  but we will be each other’s first date.

  One kiss.

  That’s all . . . but

  for the rest of our lives we never, ever forget.

  In the meantime,

  my tongue explores the toothless gap

  and you lean over your desk and concentrate

  on drawing the feathery,

  feathery lines of a dragon’s wings.

  Mandy Coe

  Tunbridge Wells

  My turn for Audrey Pomegranate,

  all-purpose friend for newcomers;

  the rest had had enough of her –

  her too-much hair, her too-much flesh,

  her moles, her sideways-gliding mouth,

  her smirking knowledge about rabbits.

  Better a gluey friend than none,

  and who was I to pick and choose?

  She nearly stuck; but just in time

  I met a girl called Mary Button,

  a neat Dutch doll as clean as soap,

  and Audrey P. was back on offer.

  Fleur Adcock

  Friends

  I fear it’s very wrong of me

  And yet I must admit,

  When someone offers friendship

  I want the whole of it.

  I don’t want everybody else

  To share my friends with me.

  At least, I want one special one,

  Who indisputedly,

  Likes me much more than all the rest,

  Who’s always on my side,

  Who never cares what others say,

  Who lets me come and hide

  Within his shadow; in his house –

  It doesn’t matter where –

  Who lets me simply be myself,

  Who’s always, always there.

  Elizabeth Jennings

  Sporty People

  I took her for my kind of person

  And it was something of a shock

  When my new friend revealed

  That, once upon a time,