And here is the eagerly awaited second part of David Donaldson’s tutorial on how to write poems for children. Having focused on their form in Part 1, he now shows us aspects of their content, using as examples the beautiful Birthday Verses he wrote for his pupils over the years.
WRITING POEMS FOR CHILDREN – by david donaldson
How do we find the right topics for our poems for children?
What follows are ten Birthday Verses, to be discussed from the point of view of their content rather than form. Use of the seasons at the time of writing and curriculum content predominate. We’ll start with two December birthdays:
POEM 1
December brings the bitter chill
That brews up colds and makes you ill
And howling gales and driving rain
That make you long for spring again –
Or else gifts wonders overnight:
A trackless world wrapped up in white
And calm still nights when the sky’s on fire
With all the stars you could desire
The strong contrast between the verses is equivalent to contraction followed by expansion, opening out to a sense of mystery and the warmth that comes with a boundless sense of wonder.
POEM 2
Another December birthday was well into Advent, so this verse was inspired by the Christmas festival:
While all was hushed and still and clear
A child was born one winter’s night
Whose coming caused a king to fear
He sent out spies to find this child
And soldiers to break down people’s doors
In Herod’s heart the world was wild
And peace nothing to do with love and light
But making sure no rival
Lived anywhere within his sight
The child survived and lived his life
Finished what he came to do:
To show a power beyond reach of kings –
And to plant it in me and you
This was addressed to a severely dyslexic child. Much help at home was needed to memorise it, but he succeeded. There was no specific reason for the choice of subject, other than it being close to his birth date and relevant for that reason.
It is an attempt to present the Christmas story in a concise and non-religious way, bearing in mind Rudolf Steiner’s insistence: “Do not imagine that you can leave Christ out; this must not be done.”
The children must be given “as tangible a picture of Christ as possible … and this must be at all levels,” i.e. ages, so that “the whole earthly life of Christ becomes the focus of attention.”
I dare to raise this issue, which tends to be the subject of some embarrassment and controversy in Waldorf schools. Of course Steiner was not talking of institutional religion, but of religion in a much deeper sense:
“To develop and unfold the whole human being and deepen in him/her a religious sense – this we regard as one of the most essential tasks of Waldorf Education.” And again: “the point of religion teaching is to foster what belongs to the feeling, and not what belongs to a world conception.”
There is much to be explored here! So much relearning through a study of Christianity’s esoteric stream as set out, for example, in Steiner’s studies of the Gospels and his ‘Fifth Gospel’, his reading from the Akashic chronicle of the life of Christ.
It is perhaps not sufficiently understood just how central the being of Christ is to the wisdom-movement called Anthroposophy that Steiner brought into being – including its educational expression.
POEM 3
In Class 3, this poem’s use of a Bible story was to mirror the daily challenges faced by a child with a serious disability. It refers to the trials of the Children of Israel in the desert, who always found help when they were struggling to cope.
And so they had to make a home
Upon the rough and ready earth
And work for all that they were worth –
It was no use to moan and groan
They had to learn to till the soil
To weave their clothes, to tend their crops
For then there weren’t such things as shops
Their life relied on their own hard toil
How welcome then was Michaël’s aid
His willingness to be their guide
And be forever at their side
Should their light grow low or fade
In this way, a sense of the dimension beyond what is visible and tangible can be given; a dimension from which fresh hope and strength can be received.
POEM 4
The next example also makes use of the curriculum’s context. Recalling Brigid’s arrival at the Oak of Kildare, it pictures the grown-up future of a child that has considerable difficulties in settling and ‘getting a grip’.
I recall when I was a seed
An acorn growing beside a weed
I could not see over the grass
Or have a glimpse of who might pass
I’d no ideas those years ago
How tall I’d be, how much I’d grow
And delve my roots deep in the earth
And broaden this trunk to such a girth
And raise these branches higher and higher
And wave and sway and never tire
Of offering welcome. Who would have guessed
I’d be so blessed? SHE passed my way
One summer’s day. She stopped and stared
At my spreading shade and then declared:
Sisters, this is where we’ll stay
The oak’s rooted strength and ability to reach out far and wide pictures a great blessing. An ideal picture to grow up with! This is combined with a sense of looking up in amazement at the person of the saint and points to a miracle: the wonder of how we grow.
POEM 5
This was addressed to the understanding of a very capable, thoughtful and rather melancholic child:
What’s the promise that always comes true?
The rainbow arching across the blue
Spanning city, hill or town
Its flight of colours streaming down
A pot of gold where it touches earth:
Just dig to find out what that’s worth
More precious than the gold you hoard
Or the dearest gift you can afford
For the rainbow’s gold is life itself
Life and light and growth and health
For what’s a rainbow if not sun and showers:
The warmth, the rain that weaves the flowers?
This meditation on God’s promise in Genesis wants to show that a rainbow is more than the symbol we respond to. (Wordsworth: “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.”) Its promise is intimately bound up with the realities of “life and light and growth and health”.
POEM 6
Addressed to a child who struggled with literacy and numeracy, the pedagogical element motivating this poem is an underlying feeling of trust in life’s slow processes:
First the seed in deep depths planted
There to dream its dream of birth
As its thirsty roots draw in
Refreshing moisture from the earth
And wake it up to breeze and sunshine
To those brave leaves which now unfold
Like a spiral staircase skyward
Mounting to the sun’s bright gold
To build a bud and then a blossom
So such fragrance fills the air
That bees and bright-winged butterflies
Are drawn to feast on nectar there
As fables do, we just leave the story’s impression to register, so this verse lets the process of plant growth speak for itself. It is supported by steady rhythms, switching between iambic and trochaic metres and leading into iambs, breathing confidence in the way things grow – surely and steadily.
POEM 7
Written in the context of Class 2’s Nature Stories, the next verse addresses a quiet child who was shy in speaking. Its little drama gave the opportunity to speak out forcefully in the character of the thrush:
‘Awake, awake,’ sang the song thrush
To the dormouse wrapped in grass
‘Why all this weary wintry hush –
Wake up now, winter’s passed!
‘The snowdrops show we’re safe from harm
There’s new-born lambs in the fields!
Look, look they hear my spring alarm
And bounce and kick up their heels!’
But the dormouse heard not a word
Of all that the song thrush said
She’d wake to the tune of the spring full moon
When Easter stroked her head
That everyone develops at different rates is characterised by the dormouse, rightly asleep within its own life rhythms. The noisy, misplaced confidence of the thrush’s judgement is contrasted with the quiet wisdom of individual cycles that are blessed by Nature.
Iambic meter is strong in places, but to pick up the speech rhythm it’s best to count the underlying pulse in each line: of either three of four stresses.
POEM 8
The next poem addresses a capable and creative individual at the advanced end of the learning spectrum. Hence the use of a word like ‘exhalation’ and the image of Nature’s creative activity that turns the past to good use:
Now the earth is stirring, stretching
Buds and shoots its fresh ideas
Exhalation every spring
As it wipes away the winter’s tears
The old year’s vanished underground
Or bedded down in deep rich mould
Worm-food, earth-food; without a sound
Up springs a kind of brand-new gold
From the veins of buried sunshine
Never lost, however cold
But stored and forged in ways so fine
Another year may unfold
This picture intends to mirror the capacities we have to recycle our experiences in creative ways.
POEM 9
This was written for a ‘good girl’ in whom I sensed both inner strength and restlessness, and who tended to attract criticism from peers:
Over the wild waters weaving
The white dove found nowhere to rest
No hill, no tree, no living thing
No twig, no place to weave a nest
But when next from the ark she flew
The whole wide world still hushed and grey
She spied in the sky the faintest blue
At the misty breaking of the day
And saw trees crowning a green hill
And smiling flowers … Oh place most blessed!
With twig to show, she flew until
Good Noah knew, and she could rest
The sense of insecurity and separateness that emerges in Class 3 can be addressed with the reassuring image of ‘good Noah’ figures, physical or spiritual, on whom one can rely and turn to for support.
POEM 10
This verse addresses the very common trait of being over-possessive of one’s friends:
Said the Bluebell to the Snowdrop
‘We’re friends now, you and me
So please don’t talk to the Daffodils
They’re awful company
‘So bright and bold and yellow
So tall upon their stalks
If you befriend such fellows
It will be the woodland talk
‘But you’re safe with me, my dear
Observe my modest blue
No blaring yellow trumpet
But a fragrance pure and true’
Said the Snowdrop to the Bluebell
‘You are my friend indeed
So modest and retiring
But you’re not all I need
‘And no true friend can claim
That: YOU belong to ME
And so, my friend, sometimes
I’ll choose the Daffodils’ company
Note: This message, recited every week, is of course good for the whole class to hear.
SPEAKING THE VERSES
In his famous work Institutio Oratoria, the Roman educator and rhetorician Quintilian stated:
“Chrysippus stressed the importance of choosing people of a very special quality to look after the child ; that the choice should be made according to voice quality, that the teacher’s voice must be excellent, so as not to influence the young initiate unfavourably, causing him to acquire in his speech and diction habits ‘which he would be obliged to rid himself of later.’”
Audrey E. McAllen mentions this quote in The Listening Ear and the Teacher’s Voice. Her book is a valuable resource for everything connected with speech in Waldorf Education.
KEEPING THE SPEAKING ALIVE
To keep the work with verses unhurried and meaningful in large classes, the weekly cycle of individual recitation can be spread out over two weeks.
After the initial novelty, the verse’s recitation must not become a dull habit. Let the speaker stand at their desk or at the back of the classroom, and support their speaking discreetly with silent gestures.
- Don’t interrupt with suggestions.
- Praise what went well, noticing improvements.
- Suggested improvements to be practised are recalled before the next recitation.
- Work on volume, fluency, enunciation and proper phrasing.
- Use descriptive images to describe how the speaking could improve.
- Asking the class for feedback can help to keep them engaged.
POSSIBLE VARIATIONS
Once individual verses are well established through weekly recitation, one can work with them in many ways:
- For a change, let the whole class recite one birthday verse (or report verse). If appropriate, its ‘owner’ can lead the class from the front.
- Challenge confident speakers to choose someone else’s verse to recite, or to recall their verse of last year.
- Mouth one of their verses silently for the children to ‘read’ which one it is.
- Begin to recite a verse, but then pause to let the class carry on. This could also be an exercise to work on clear articulation, passing between you at the front and the speaker at the back.
THE ‘GOD’ ISSUE
Having raised the issue of religion earlier, I’d like to finish with this point. Many Birthday Verses refer to God by way of communicating a loving and reassuring picture of the world. Some teachers find this difficult, to the point of not using Rudolf Steiner’s traditional Morning Verses because they mention God.
Steiner’s words quoted earlier speak of Christ and the divine but don’t include the word ‘God’. In the statue he created at the Goetheanum, “The Representative of Humanity” is placed between the two poles of evil, though it is clearly Christ who is meant. Yes, Steiner was aware of and sensitive to how the words we use can raise barriers.
Personally, I had no difficulty using the word ‘God’ in Birthday Verses such as:
I stand in sunlight straight and true
God’s loving light warms all I do … etc.
But I was surprised, on looking back, how little I had in fact used the word. This was because my focus was visual: the image of the child, their temperament which might suggest colours or ways of moving, the season of their birthday, nature, or story images arising from the curriculum.
God, being non-visual, rarely entered. Except, for example, in Class 3 Birthday Verses about the Creation:
God’s wisdom fills the world
His light, a fire-flower
Unfurled in the vast void of space
The sun, called forth from out
The formless deep in the beginning
Heavenly warmth, which bathes my face
And wakens me from sleep each day –
The sun, God’s strength
And source of all that lives
This was written for a leading individual in the class, capable of strong expressive speech. So, for a change, I dropped the use of rhyme, feeling that he would be able to rise to the challenge presented here. Which he did.
Writing Birthday or Report Verses is an imaginative and not a theological activity, but it consciously engages with the spiritual world. This means that we are placing ourselves in the stream of the Word in which Divine Beings live.
In writing such verses, our activity is a conscious striving to open ourselves to the inspiration of that world which is holding the best interests of each child at heart, at the same time entrusting them to our care.
See an overview of David Donaldson’s publications and poem samples here:
Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.
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