’Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.’
Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Global Poetry System is a user generated world map of poetry found at www.southbankcentre.co.uk/gps
This week sees the launch of the Imagine Children’s Festival here at Southbank Centre, which promises to be full of wonderful readings, storytelling and poetry featuring some of today’s leading children’s writers, as well as comedy, visual arts, magic and music.
To celebrate the launch of the festival, we’ve picked out Laura Dockrill’s reading of The Pig by Roald Dahl, John Hegley’s reading of Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc, and Francesca Beard’s reading of Cargoes by John Masefield as this week’s featured poems. We’ve also picked out an incredibly moving poem written on a small pebble, by a six year old on the Lune Estuary.
Childhood is a time of great excitement and awe, and as Goethe writes, ‘If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.’ So throughout the Imagine festival, why not try and get back in touch with your inner child, and tell us your favourite poem or nursery rhyme from childhood. Post it as a video, photo, audio recording, or text, and place it on our map. Maybe you’ll choose to place it where you first heard the poem as a child, or maybe you’ll place it where you are now. Or maybe the poem can be a bridge between those two places?
And if all this talk of nursery rhymes and children’s poetry has whetted your appetite, then be sure to check out the wonderful collection of children’s poetry in the Poetry Library here at Southbank Centre. Among the poems you know, you may find a few new favorites in some of our more unusual anthologies, such as, Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, or Coin Opera; a wonderful micro-anthology that takes computer games as its theme.
GPS
Find it, Map it, Share it
Filed under: Global Poetry System | Tagged: Child, Kid, place, Poetry, youth
