Belonging

 

The theme of poetry this year is belonging. My first thought for a reading at Meeting was A. A. Milne, but I didn’t know what at first. There’ll be something. “No man is an island” rose quickly to the surface, not a poem but poetic prose in one of John Donne’s meditations. On the morning I open, as always, with ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’, familiar surprise, which I explain to the students as about us belonging in the universe. We see it, we say it, we know it. This nursery rhyme is linked to ‘Friends’, a late Bruce Dawe poem where he says we see friends more brightly as we see stars “from a deep well at night”, friendship being an “unblinking beneficence.” More friends poems follow, ‘Girl Friends’, by Shirley Hughes (“Marian, Lily and Annie Rose … sometimes grubby, sometimes clean, Often kind, though sometimes mean…”; then ‘The Four Friends’ of A. A. Milne, “Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow...”, a rhyme in which Ernest, a lion, a goat, and a snail do their own thing, all very different, the only hint they are friends being in the title. They belong. We then hear about the world from the dog’s perspective as she gazes at her humans in ‘Reverie of Dora Pamphlet’ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, a poet who lives in Brunswick, in close vicinity to some of the students: “Those bipeds reckon that I dream/ but I don’t entirely know/ what they could mean by that.” It was a delight to introduce ‘Auntie Dot’ by Elizabeth Honey only to be told that this very poem chosen was being memorised by a couple of the year levels. Um, what? Unfussed, unphased, we decided that I would lead a recitation and everyone could join in. Belonging accepts difference, so it was right to read the traditional “Monday’s child is fair of face” followed by its mischievous counterpoint, “Monday’s child is red and spotty,/ Tuesday’s child won’t use the potty …” by Colin McNaughton. Any rude words get a reliable chorus of laughter from small children. Another and essential place of belonging is school. It was therefore good to have a recent acrostic to read out, written by Fitzroy students Jibrail and Audrey. Transcribed horizontally their poem goes “Fun 100 percent Incredible Totally inspiring Zoo of kids Radical Original Yak (because we couldn’t think of another word) Community One of a kind Magical Mathematical Unbelievably good Never blue Individual Totally unique Yummy food Supportive Cool Happy Odd Out of this world Learning community.” Later in class we will revisit the acrostic concept. Everyone writes their own poem, inspired by what they’ve heard, though none of them will write poems like those, rather the one they’ve been carrying around ready to write out in copperplate. Meeting didn’t get to hear ‘No Man is an Island’ by John Donne because we had run out of time and the acrostic sort of said it all.