NHS Poem Especially for Children

December 8, 2008

This year marks the 60th Anniversary of the inception of the National Health Service (NHS) in Great Britain. To honour the occasion, the NHS commissioned the children’s laureate Michael Rosen to write a poem that young people would understand. The aim was to inform new generations of the ‘good healthcare should be available to all’ motto of the health service that has been so important to society as a whole over recent decades.

Michael Rosen, a great admirer of the NHS, was honoured to be asked to write the poem. The fact that the institution had seen his five children born in their hospitals and had later saved two of them from septicaemia and pneumonia was not something to be ignored or taken for granted.

“When I came to write this poem, I wanted to express the idea that it serves us cradle to the grave, but I also wanted to celebrate everybody in the service.” said Rosen. “There are many different kinds of essential work going on every minute of the day and I wanted to show that.”

Children asked about the poem gave it raving reviews which was the most important feedback the poet needed.

Theo, aged nine, a pupil from a school in Camden said: “I liked the way it had a constant rhythm a bit like a heartbeat. I think it would cheer up children going into hospital.”

Teachers too have been delighted with the piece.

“I think it is a delightful idea getting the children’s poet laureate to write a poem celebrating the NHS at 60,” said Steven Buzzard, a teacher. “We studied the poem and found it a really good way of teaching the children about the NHS and how long it has been going.”

Hospital directors, paediatricians, politicians and parents have all noted over the years how important the National Health Service has been to the country. However there is still work to be done and more children needing treatment and a sense of security. It’s hoped that Rosen’s poem will go a long way to helping bring down the mystery or anxieties of hospitals.

The poem is as follows.

‘These are the Hands’

These are the hands
That touch us first
Feel your head
Find the pulse
And make your bed.
These are the hands
That tap your back
Hold your arm
Wheel the bin
Change the bulb
Fix the drip
Pour the jug
Replace your hip
These are the hands
That fill the bath
Mop the floor
Flick the switch
Soothe the sore
Burn the swabs
Give us a jab
Throw out sharps
Design the lab.
And these are the hands
That stop the leaks
Empty the pan
Wipe the pipes
Carry the can
Clamp the veins
Make the cast
Log the dose
And touch us last.

by Michael Rosen

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Charles Simic returns to writing poetry

July 28, 2008

Charles Simic, the 15th Poet Laureate of the United States, chose to step down this Summer and not seek an extension to his term for a second year. This led to Kay Ryan being named his successor. The reasons he gave for retiring from the spotlight included the tiring monotony of travelling constantly from one event or performance and the lack of time in which to write poetry. The understandable frustration of not having composed a poem for over a year was the final straw.

“One year is enough,” said Simic. “Washington is too far, and the travel these days is no fun.”

Simic lives with his wife on the shores of Bow Lake in Strafford, New Hampshire, where he is professor emeritus of American literature and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire. Within the space of a few months, he had travelled back and forth between Washington a total of nine times and made numerous trips to give readings as far afield as the Mid West and California.

The Serbian-American poet who was born in Belgrade in 1938, moved to the States at the age of 16 with his family and settled in Chicago. He was later to earn a B.A. from New York University. His war-torn beginnings have influenced much of his poetry and indeed his political views.

“I got invitations to the White House, but I didn’t go,”

The poet laureate has an office with a parlour overlooking the Capitol and from there he formed numerous opinions of the national political culture. “Washington is the capital of a corrupt empire fighting two hopeless wars and yearning to have more,” he said. “Every powerful figure in Washington is surrounded by a flock of beautiful, well-educated, highly competent women who run after them all day carrying documents, reminding them of appointments and flattering them how good they look. No wonder these men think they are geniuses.”

The transition from ‘travelling salesman’ back to full-time poet was not a hard one. However whilst relieved he is also aware of the great importance of the position of poet laureate to be vital. “It reminds Americans that there’s such a thing as poetry and that poets are people like them,” he said. “They may believe poets have their heads in the clouds, and then they meet or hear one and are delighted that it isn’t so.”

One thing that has shocked Simic, especially over the last couple of years, is the amount of poetry being written and read in America. He said: “People who do not think so ought to go on the internet and type in ‘poetry’ and be prepared to fall off their chairs. This is a country of loners, and poetry, it seems, is the only place one can speak about that solitude and read the work of others who are in the same boat.”

As well as being a world renowned poet, Charles Simic is also a philosopher, essayist, translator and commentator on various subjects including Jazz and Art. He is currently the poetry editor, along with Meghan O’Rourke, for The Paris Review and was one of the judges for the 2007 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. His latest book of poems, That Little Something, was published in early 2008.

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New US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan

July 19, 2008

The American Library of Congress announced on Thursday that the award-winning Californian poet Kay Ryan will become the 16th poet laureate, this approaching autumn. The self-described “modern hermit” who writes Emily Dickinson-style metaphysical poetry will receive a $40,000 salary for her one year stint as the acme of the US poetry world.

Ryan was born in 1945 in California and grew up in the small towns of the San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert. She would go on to receive a bachelor’s and master’s degree from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).

She was said to have been ‘delighted and surprised’ when the Library of Congress had contacted her and thought at first she had forgotten to return some overdue books.

Her favourite poets include the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, the English novelist Philip Larkin and John Donne the Jacobean who is catagorised as being part of the 17th century metaphysical poetic movement.

Kay Ryan’s poetry style is of a reflectively short but profound and seriocomical nature which focuses on both the confines of our lives and the illimitable vastness of the universe and existence. She has published a number of works including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005); Say Uncle (2000); Elephant Rocks (1996); Flamingo Watching (1994), which incidentally was a finalist for both the Lamont Poetry Selection and the Lenore Marshall Prize; Strangely Marked Metal (1985); and Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends (1983).

Her poems have also been printed in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Yale Review, Paris Review, The American Scholar, The Threepenny Review and Parnassus, to name but a few.

Today she lives with her partner Carol Adair in Fairfax, California.
For an example of her work visit Poetry Magazine.

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