From the bookshelves 5

I used to skip poetry in books I was reading. At primary school we were introduced to poetry of Walter de la Mare and Robert Louis Stevenson and encouraged to write a verse or two; of course it had to rhyme and have a nice tum-de-dum rhythm. Then came 'O' level and CSE English which included a good smattering of the likes of Spender, Auden, Blackburn, Hughes, R S Thomas; and whole books of nothing but poetry. I like reading poetry now, influenced by all the Poetry in a Pub readings in the sixties; but I don't read enough now and, bad student that I am, never learned much by heart. I shall have to use my dad's tactic to stave of dementia; he learned all of the Rubaiyat (Fitzgerald's first translation) of Omar Khayyam . . . and this was a man who, when playing Iago, had the director in despair because he hadn't learned his lines soon enough for her liking. I've had the same trouble. After school I found the Beat poets and Brian Pattern, Anselm Hollo, and Adrian Henri (the Beatles aren't the only product of Liverpool); Leonard Cohen was popular, too, especially after he started recording and playing at the Isle of Wight festival.

I did learn this old London rhyme hence the approximation of how a street urchin might say it. I had it by heart in about five minutes in my 'yoof'. It can be found in Verse and Worse, I think

We had a bleedin' sparrer
What lived up a bleedin spaht
One day the bleedn' rain came dahn
And washed the bleeder aht

And as he lay 'arf drahnded
Dahn in the bleedin' street
He begged that bleedin' rainstorm
To bathe 'is bleedin' feet

Then the bleedin' sun came aht
Dried up the bleedin' rain
And that bleedin' sparrer
Climbed up the bleedin' spaht again

Then a bleedin' sparrer-'awk
Spies 'im in 'is snuggery
Sharpens up 'is bleedin' claws
And pulls 'im aht by thuggery

Then a bleedin sportin' type
What had a bleedin' gun
Spies the bleedin' sparrer-'awk
And blasts 'is bleedin' fun

The moral of this story
Is plain to everyone
Them what's up the bleedin' spaht
Don't get no bleedin' fun.

And I love listening to Ian Macmillan's Roger McGough's voice on BBCRadio 4's Poetry Please . . .

[edit 24 Sept '09: I'm confused again. Ian's programme is The Verb on Radio 3]