National Poetry Day has been and gone, leaving me somewhat depressed. Reluctant to learn poems by heart, discouraged by the idiotic National Curriculum to do creative writing, and even deprived of the wonderful Poems on the Underground, the new generation is in danger of being turned off verse.

The best time to read poetry to children is not at school, however, but when they are relaxed, receptive and unable to make a dash for freedom: ie, in the bath. I have a tower of poetry collections, ranging from Walter de la Mare’s famous Come Hither! to Michael Morpurgo’s Because a Fire Was in My Head, and they are in surprising demand (once my cattle prod has been put to good use). This autumn has seen the publication of several more. For children of 4+, Carol Anne Duffy’s reinvention of The Night Before Christmas is a delight – though you should first buy the original, gloriously illustrated by Christian Birmingham, to fully enjoy the jokes. In Another Night Before Christmas, Duffy has a child “just like a mouse” creeping downstairs to try and find out whether Santa is real, for “There were some who said no, he was really just Mum./With big cushions or pillow to plump out her tum”. Needless to say, Santa does turn out to exist. What is exquisitely enjoyable is the way Duffy uses the same metre as Clement Moore’s original but gives the words a good shake to include wry asides about modern celebrity culture, the inability of “a faraway satellite dish to see miracles as “its eye’s empty socket films famine and greed”.

Yet more striking is the way Duffy uses religious imagery to point up our culture of faithlessness and materialism. A child who is told that “cashpoints glowed softly like icons of light” may not know what a religious icon is, but once this is explained it becomes as unforgettable as the two aeroplanes speeding “to the east and the west/like a pulled Christmas cracker.” The innocent hopefulness of the child despite the cynicism of the adult world make this almost too poignant to read, but Duffy’s genius and wit makes it a must-have, even if the dorky pictures make it unlikely to become an annual favourite.

Children do not enjoy reading about their own condition, and Michael Donaghy’s 101 Poems About Childhood is a case in point. This is one of the most original and effective themed collections I’ve come across, starting with the passage about Hector removing his helmet for his baby son in the Iliad, and finishes with the last line of Kate Clanchy’s Mitigation, “the short, sharp slaps/of grown-ups clamouring to get back.” There are predictable old favourites such as Thomas Hood’s “I remember, I remember,” Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill and DH Lawrence’s Piano, intermingled with less familiar poems by Rilke, Roethke and Edith Sodergran. All present childhood as a time of bliss, and almost none of them will therefore interest an actual child. Buy it for yourself, and not your little ones.

What children do enjoy is more along the lines of Simon Bartram’s Watch Out for Sprouts! (Templar) which is all his own work. As they focus on lavatory humour and are accompanied by his rumbustious, Mad magazine-style pictures, they are an instant hit with boys of 6-10. If you think yours will enjoy verses such as “Barry Doom and Gavin Gloom/Sat inside their murky room/Pondering impending doom/ Until sure enough the world went….”, then don’t hesitate. Here are verses telling Tarzan to become a New Man, and warning boys to beware of girls and Toilets that Bite Your Bum. My children have been inseparable from it at meal-times.

Daisy Goodwin’s Essential Poems for Children (Harpercollins) is subtitled “first aid for frantic parents”, and present poetry as a sort of Bach’s Rescue Remedy. I dislike this approach intensely, and her introduction, descanting on how “for me poetry is a dressing up box to be played with not an exam tinged cupboard under the stairs” emphasises its coy commerciality. Even so, there are a handful of good ones by obscure poets who are worth looking out for – Jack Prelutsky’s ‘Never Never Disagree’ is short enough to memorise and will raise a laugh, and there are lashings of Spike Milligan in among traditional favourites by Christina Rossetti and Hilaire Belloc.

The best collections of poetry are inevitably made by poets, and while both The Rattle Bag, and Charles Causeley’s collection for Macmillan are equally essential, the next-best is The New Faber Book of Children’s Verse edited by Matthew Sweeney. This is not new (it has been around since 2001) but has been reissued by the publishers to be in the shops for Christmas. I don’t much care for the illustrations by Sarah Fanelli, but what is so good about this refreshingly astringent collection is the freshness of much of the material – Sweeney has looked out for “poems written for adults that I felt would speak to children”, and they do. Roethke again makes several appearances; there is a grisly poem, The Fly, by Miroslav Holub which instantly appeals to the ruthless side of children, and particularly fine poems by Roger McGough, Shel Silverstein and Charles Causley, among others. One would not wish to be deprived of the magical language of traditional collections, but here are children being bullied, discovering aliens, feeling lonely and yearning not for their own childhood but for what will help them escape its powerlessness and boredom. If poetry such as this could reach the new generation, they might feel it has something to say to them after all.

Also try:

Lavender’s Blue, ed. Kathleen Lines, OUP, 2+. Most child-friendly nursery rhyme treasury, thanks to exquisite colour illustrations by Harold Jones.
The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book, ed. Opie OUP 3+ Best collection ever, illustrated by the great Joan Hassall.
Macmillan’s Treasury of Poetry for Children, ed Charles Causley 5+. Excellent colour illustrations by Diz Wallis on every page, and poems collected by theme. The best possible introduction to poetry.
The Nation’s Favourite Children’s Poems, BBC, 7+ A jolly collection, well illustrated, with good dragon poems.
The Rattle Bag, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, Faber. 9+ For when you can make pictures in your head and hear the music of the spheres.

The Times, November 2005