Jane Newbery - CLiPPA shortlisted poet

Nikki Gamble talks to Jan Newbery about her CLiPPa shortlisted collection, Big Red Dragon, and writing verse for very young children and their adults.

Transcript

First up is Jane Newbery. Jane has a wonderful pedigree for writing children’s poetry. She’s worked as a puppeteer and taught early years music for over 25 years. She wrote and illustrated three songbooks: A Sackful of Songs, A Sackful of Christmas, and What’s in the Sack? Musicality and an ear for the beats of the language infuse her rhymes for very young children.

A previous collection, The Big Green Crocodile, illustrated by Carolyn Rabei and published by Otter-Barry Books, was shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2021.

Her latest collection, Big Red Dragon, is shortlisted for this year’s CLiPPA Award.

Nikki Gamble

Jane, one of the things that I want to talk about first is the gap in writing poetry for very young children. When I was growing up, we had lots of nursery rhyme collections. And when I first started teaching, there was a book called This Little Puffin. I had to have it with me at all times. It was my handbook. Do you think there is a gap today?

Jane Newberry:

Yes, I think you’re right. While we have a lot of picture book stories in rhyme, that’s probably the only readily available source of poetry for very young children. Poetry collections in themselves, are much less readily available.

Nikki Gamble:

There is a difference between a rhyming story and a verse or poetry collection. Even though children are experiencing rhyme and rhythm through the rhyming story, it’s not the same as a short rhyme you recite at any time of the day. It becomes part of your oral repertoire.

Jane Newberry:

Absolutely. It was certainly like that for me as a child because I was really lucky to have a mother who was intensely interested in poetry. Her entertainment on car journeys was to recite poetry; we thought that was normal. And they were incredibly memorable. All the old favourites from old anthologies, like The Highwayman. And she’d do a double act with my dad at weekends after Sunday lunch. Suddenly they would both stop, look at each other and start to recite: ‘There’s a lovely seaside place called Blackpool that’s noted for fresh air and fun, and Mr and Mrs. Ramsbottom went there with Young Albert, their son. We just loved it.

Nikki Gamble:

For me, it was Matilda who told such dreadful lies.

My grandma lived to be 107, and she was still reciting Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ at 107. She’d learned it as a child, but it stayed with her throughout her life and became so much a part of her.

Jane Newberry:

Yes. I think it’s little understood, actually, how deeply poetry goes. It’s something right in our DNA; it’s been there since time began. I’ve just been doing some work with dementia patients, and it’s astonishing that suddenly something switches on in them and they can remember, as you say, all these little rhymes from long ago.

Nikki Gamble:

Poetry and music, both seem to stick in the memory.

Were nursery rhymes part of that repertoire? And can you remember the nursery rhymes you learned when you were younger?

Jane Newberry:

Yes, I think I had a good selection. We had an anthology called Lavender’s Blue, which I think has been reprinted. It was a full anthology of all the old favourites: ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, ‘Lavender’s Blue’, and ‘Incy Wincey Spider.’ It was invaluable, really. Possibly, I overdid nursery rhymes when I was first starting to teach little children. And that was what led me to think there must be something else. There must be a better way than the little boy blue blowing his horn, which doesn’t mean much to four-year-olds today.

Nikki Gamble:

That leads me very nicely to my next question, which is: ‘Why do you write?’ You’ve identified a gap, but tell us more about that.

Jane Newberry:

I can’t stop writing. It very much pours out of me. I have been running groups involving music, songs, percussion exercises, and plenty of play and rhyme for many years. I like to feed new material in all the time, and it’s tremendous. I still do it now, even though technically I’m probably too old to be larking around on the floor. But I love it and it’s always been part of my USP.

Nikki Gamble:

You’ve obviously got a very playful approach. So do new rhymes arise in the moment while you are playing, or do you have a more work-like approach? Do you sit down at a desk to start composing?

Jane Newberry:

I think I’m very random.. I’ve never grown up. I am just still somewhere around three, so everything I do is playful, and I love tum-tee- tum rhythms. Most of my writing is done when I’m out on the dog walk; that rhythm of walking helps me. Perhaps I’ll record it on my phone these days, but hopefully it gets to paper at some point. I’m afraid it’s not a daily discipline for me. It’s a spontaneous moment. You could catch me hopping and jumping when I’m out on a walk.

Nikki Gamble:

I do want to say for anybody listening to this as an audio, as opposed to watching the video, that I am admiring your liquorice allsorts earrings. I used to love my earrings when I was teaching. I had some lovely skeleton ones that I used to wear, and all the bones would dangle independently of each other.

Jane Newberry:

It would be a great dread if I lost this pair. I feel they’re part of me now, and children look out for them.

Nikki Gamble:

Let’s move on to discuss the shortlisted collection, Big Red Dragon. You’d already published a collection with Otter-Barry Books. What’s different about this one?

Jane Newberry:

This one follows the pattern of the year, which was Janetta Otter-Barry’s idea, and I think, on reflection, a good one. It sews everything together, which is really useful for teachers because they always have to find something for a particular festival. And we’ve got a bit in, a red dragon rhyme in there that fits nicely with Chinese New Year. And then we’ve got the winter ones at the back, and we’ve got Easter Bunny and all the important focal points of the year.

Nikki Gamble:

You’ve got two audiences, in a way. The children themselves are enjoying the rhymes, but you are also talking to the adults through this book.

Jane Newberry:

Oh yes. I have tremendous empathy with adults, partly because I’m a grandmother, and that helps you know what it’s like when you can’t actually see the print in the book and you’re trying to read for a squirming 2-year-old. So I’m very conscious of trying to make life easier for the adult reader, but also to make it more fun for them because I know my children grumble that some books are just too dull or too worthy, and they’re really looking for something a bit more spunky and fun.

Nikki Gamble:

While we are talking about the appeal of the book, both of those collections are beautifully illustrated. When you’ve learnt a rhyme, you don’t actually need the book. So are the illustrations important?

Jane Newberry:

I think they are massively important. They are the first thing that attracts a parent to want to buy the book, and the children focus totally on the picture. Carolina Rabei is skilled at using exciting colours and showing all the things children can associate with their everyday lives. Her pictures have a lovely, gorgeous mess of everyday play, which I think is terribly important.

Jane Newberry:

I loved her pictures from the outset – the first time she drew Big Red Dragon, I thought it was superb. Carolina cut her teeth on Big Green Crocodile, and then she produced her own baby. And I think the illustrations after her baby are probably even better. I think understanding that world as she does, and probably having to work in haste, as you do when you’ve got young children. I’m very thrilled with her interpretations.

Nikki Gamble:

Could you teach me a rhyme from your collection?

Jane Newberry:

I have to wave my arms around. This is not something I can do statically, so I was trying to think of something that I could do without bouncing too much around the room. If I go for ‘Castle Life’. It has different voices, and I’m very keen on poems introducing different sounds and voices to the youngest children because that keeps their attention.

READS CASTLE LIFE

Nikki Gamble:

See, even I could learn that one. I chose a poem as well, and wonder whether you would indulge me by reading this one.

Jane Newberry:

‘Happy Diwali.’ You can say it or sing it, as it fits nicely to the tune of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’, which everybody knows. It’s just for variety. It’s quite fun to sing once you’ve been saying it for a bit. It’s called ‘Happy Diwali’ because I’ve learned a lot about Diwali since writing it, and it is a most wonderful, happy time in the Autumn.

READS HAPPY DIWALI

Nikki Gamble:

One of the reasons I picked that out was that we’ve talked a little bit about nursery rhymes, but they are all set in a pre-19th-century era. They’re timeless, but that does mean they don’t reflect our wonderful, pluralistic society. Were you very conscious about that when you included this poem?

Jane Newberry:

I think I probably was. I live in a fairly far-away spot in Cornwall, and schools are only just starting to do anything about Diwali. So it’s unfamiliar territory to all of us down here. I realised that we need to introduce the people of the far-flung parts of the UK to a more global society and help them realise that there’s a lot more out there than just their Christmas and Easter.

Nikki Gamble:

Of all the poets I’ve spoken to, you clearly have children in mind when you write, so it would be silly of me to ask you whether that’s true.

I wanted to ask you if you read much poetry yourself, apart from children’s verse rhymes.

Jane Newberry:

I do. I read quite a lot of adult poetry, but I have a terrible book-buying disease, and I acquire many other people’s collections. Otter-Barry keeps tempting me with various new poets that they keep discovering. I usually have a poetry book by the bed.

Nikki Gamble:

What’s there at the moment?

Jane Newberry:

I’m very fond of anthologies. Heroes and Villains published by Macmillan and edited by Ana Sampson. I have one poem in there, but many of my old favourites are included too. It is a wonderful mixture of the very new, the best children’s poets around today, plus the old traditional ballads.

Nikki Gamble:

That is a good anthology, isn’t it? When there are. The best of the traditional, but there are some surprises in there.

Performance must be really important to you as well.

Jane Newberry:

Oh, absolutely. I have a weekly group every Friday morning, and I am always performing with them. With the very young children, it’s the first thing you think about, as they don’t read the words. They can only access the poem through however marvellous you manage to make it.

So you have to be able to be an actress and be scary ( but not too scary), exciting, and expressive. I think it’s very useful for teachers to see that happening. Because the more exciting you are, the more attention the children will pay you.

Nikki Gamble:

There’s no point being a wallflower when you’re sharing poetry with children.

You have been shortlisted for the CLiPPA before, so you will have experienced the shadowing process. What was that like?

Jane Newberry:

It was tremendously uplifting. I was constantly amazed by how imaginative the children and, obviously, the teachers in the schools were in interpreting the poems.

Children always bring you something new and something unexpected.

A tiny example of this is when I was writing some Christmas material and I was doing a very basic exercise with claves. Two boys were rather slow at putting their claves back in the box. They came shuffling along with a stick on their heads. And I was about to tick them off. Then I thought, oh no. And I said, ‘what are you doing, Louie?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I’m a rabbit, and Luca is the reindeer.’ I replied ‘Excellent,thank you, reindeer. I’ll have your claves.’ Afterwards . I wrote the best song that I’ve ever written called rabbits and reindeer. But I would never have thought of that if the children hadn’t brought me that idea, and that’s what they do.

Nikki Gamble:

What you’re saying is how important it is for us to be good listeners. As adults, we can stop listening to children because we get caught up in what we want them to do. Listening gave you a gift of the next poem.

It’s been such a pleasure to talk to you today, Jane.

Regardless of what happens with the judging process, I hope you enjoy the shadowing process again.

Jane Newberry:

Thank you. It’s been a huge pleasure.