Children’s Verse
Joseph Bottum
From the 19th century on, children’s verse has been quite possibly the best-read, best-selling, and best-loved kind of poetry in English. The innumerable editions of Mother Goose, Victorian nonsense poems, the golden age of Edwardian children’s books, the revivals of the 1960s and 1970s, and down to the present day: Poetry for children has rolled along its tracks, little troubled by the other poetic fashions of the day. And the question, of course, is why. In these discussions at the Frost Farm, we will be looking at the received canon of older verse, together with more recent work, to unpack the meters, vocabulary, grammar, and themes that make the best children’s verse successful as poetry and enthralling for children. And, along the way, we’ll try our own hands at creating new work in the styles we explore.
