My mum sat me down on the sofa with the baby
I touched his face, it felt like a cushion
I quickly withdrew my hand as if it was a bomb
About to go off
I peered into his face
It looked squashed and fat and ugly
I peered in disgust at this
“Sweet little angel”
He seemed to hear my thoughts
He cried, I cried
We both cried
Together
Charlotte Croft, 8,Stoke Hill middle school, Exeter
Art promises everything and changes nothing. I don’t know who said this or even in what century. What I do know is you can say anything about art and believe it. It is a “fourth-dimensional world” where anything goes. It is itself, in fact, in Auden’s words, “a way of happening”. And a way of happening that affects the writer as much as, if not more than, it does the viewer or reader.
Edith Wharton says of writing her first book: “I felt like some homeless waif whoI has finally acquired a nationality.” She experiences her life as a foreign country in which she builds herself this sanctuary - of her writing.
Charlotte Croft has built herself a sanctuary, too. It’s one in which she feels agreeably at home: the mum, the sofa, the baby are all set down clearly before us. She makes no excuses and tells no lies. The baby’s face is “squashed and fat and ugly”. The baby himself is a cushion; an angel; a bomb. We can just imagine him.
We can just imagine Charlotte the writer, too - straight-talking, authoritative and attentive, she writes as if to write is to be herself. As if the readers are her welcome guests.
PS. Here’s the answer to last week’s conundrum: an example of an English word with nine letters and only one syllable is stretched. Can you think of an anagram for carthorse? (I think these two words are two of my favourite words - if it is possible to have such things.) Selima Hill
Charlotte Croft receives The Puffin Book of 20th Century Verse, edited by Brian Patten (Puffin). Her poem was submitted by Lindsey McRea. Selima Hill, TESguest poet for this term, won this year’s Whitbread poetry prize for Bunny. She is a tutor for the Poetry School and the South Bank Centre, and is working on her eighth collection, Portrait of my Lover as a Horse. Please send poems, no longer than 20 lines, to Friday magazine, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX. Include the poet’s name, age and address, the name of the submitting teacher and the school address. Or email: friday@tes.co.uk
