How did you first engage with poetry?
If you’re really asking when this ‘first’ occurred I’d have to respond by blaming my love of poetry on nursery rhymes. The esteemed (at least in my mind) writer, Philip Pullman, contends that there’s no greater language experience we can offer children than to expose them to the sounds/songs/rhythms of these traditional rhymes—that they help forge syntax, vocabulary and sentences patterns onto the brain (and, I contend, onto what many might call soul). I was lucky in that I not only heard these when I was very young, I learned to read before I went to school and enjoyed reading (and re-reading) illustrated books containing such verse. To this day, I can picture illustrations that accompanied some of these, so maybe that early engagement contributed to my seeking visual imagery in poems too.
No comments:
Post a Comment