Children's column: Celebrating Eliot's children's verse

Written by Nicolette Jones

Monday, 10 August 2009 10:09

T S Eliot is enjoying a flurry of recognition as publisher and poet as part of Faber’s eightieth anniversary celebrations. On Monday 21 September at 6.30pm, for instance, at the British Library Conference Centre, he will be discussed by former Faber MD Matthew Evans, poetry editor Paul Keegan, poet Don Paterson and scholar Ronald Schuchard, with John Haffenden, editor of Eliot’s Letters, in the chair. And on Wednesday 30 in the same venue, the Four Quartets will be read aloud with commentary by literary and theatrical friends of Josephine Hart.

But also to celebrate is T S Eliot’s contribution as a writer for children. His collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was published in 1939, the last year of his editorship of the journal Criterion. This is after all the book that sustained Faber for many years, thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of the poems it contained, including some characters from unpublished manuscripts, notably Grizabella. The income from Cats also led to the foundation of Old Possum’s Practical Trust, which gives grants to organisations that “increase knowledge and appreciation of any matters of historic, artistic, architectural, aesthetic, literary, musical or theatrical interest”.

The Trust has funded, for the past four years, Old Possum’s Children’s Poetry Competition, run by the Poetry Book Society. This year the competition, tied in to National Poetry Day on 8 October (entries 10 September -19 October), will be judged by Carol Ann Duffy (chair) with John Agard, Antonia Byatt, Gillian Clarke, Janetta Otter-Barry and Roger Stevens. The theme is ‘Heroes and Heroines’. See www.childrenspoetrybookshelf.com for details. (Meanwhile poetry competitions are also being run by Walker Books – for 5-14s, closing date 14 November: www.walker.co.uk, and by Foyles – Young Poets of the Year for 11-17s: www.foyleyoungpoets.org.)

In June we learned that Eliot had also written a 34-line poem about cows, for a family newspaper created for the children of fellow Faber director and neighbour Frank Morley, as described in BBC 2’s Arena: T S Eliot, broadcast as part of the BBC’s poetry season. Morley’s daughter Susanna, Eliot’s goddaughter, is also one of the dedicatees of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. The newly discovered poem began: “Of all the beasts that God allows/In England’s green and pleasant land,/I most of all dislike the Cows:/ Their ways I do not understand.”

It demonstrates, as do the Old Possum's poems, an accessibility and humour that belie the difficult reputation of the author of The Waste Land. It is a misapprehension to assume that Eliot needed an Andrew Lloyd Webber to “popularise” this work (some poems from which had been read by Robert Donat to a musical accompaniment by Alan Rawsthorne in the mid-1950s). The poems were already splendidly engaging for children of precisely the age invited to enter the Old Possum poetry competition – the 7-11s.

Sharon Creech recognises this in her latest book: Hate That Cat (Bloomsbury paperback, 3 August), which refers, in its account of a schoolboy appreciating and writing poetry, to Eliot’s The Naming of Cats. (This same poem is also mentioned in the film Logan’s Run.) Jack, Creech's narrator, eventually names his cat Skitter McKitter, rather in the vein of Hairy McLairy. "The Naming of Cats" appears complete, along with poems by William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allan Poe, among others, in the appendix of Creech’s verse novel. There is a typo, though, that renders hypothetical cat’s name Jellylorum as Jellyrum. How did I spot this? Because between the ages of 7 and 11 I memorised the poems from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats obsessively. T S Eliot, unmediated, touched a chord with me.

And I still recite "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat" and "Growltiger’s Last Stand" at the drop of a hat.

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