Today’s poem is chosen and introduced by Ms Ivison:
Overheard on a Saltmarsh is a poem you will find in almost every childrens anthology in the library. It is a charming poem that details a snippet of conversation between a Nymph and a Goblin. It does not really invite analysis in the same way some of the other poems we have read in Poem of the Day; it is merely an imagined but tantalising glimpse into the realm of the fairy world.
I have chosen this poem because it is one of my earliest memories of literature. My mother used to recite it to me and let me hold her 1940s green glass foil beads and I would wonder if they had pieces of the moon inside them. A couple of years ago I was at The Vintage Clothes Fair in Chelsea Town Hall when I saw on a table some green glass beads. As I picked them up I was transported back to childhood and not to specific memories really, because those are long gone, but more to a feeling of the memories they connect to. As I looked at them a woman whispered in my ear ‘Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?’ It was the designer Vivienne Westwood. She smiled and said I can never resist them, I have a whole drawer full. For that moment, the image written by Harold Monroe in 1917 connected two complete strangers.
So with this poem I invite you to think about your earliest memories of literature. From Where the Wild Things Are to Each, peach, pear, plum, Please Mrs Butler, The Jabberwocky and beyond. The poems and stories we read and are read to as children form the foundation of our imaginations. To a certain extent they make us who we are. Let yourself daydream; are there specific words or images that act as a portkey for your memories? Is there a line of a poem you learnt in junior school that has stayed with you until today? Do you remember the book that made you a reader? Have you always loved the same type of literature and if so why do you think that is? What does it speak to inside you?
I still read this poem to the juniors and think of my mothers beads every time
Overheard on a Saltmarsh
Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?
Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?
Give them me.
No.
Give them me. Give them me.
No.
Then I will howl all night in the reeds,
Lie in the mud and howl for them.
Goblin, why do you love them so?
They are better than stars or water,
Better than voices of winds that sing,
Better than any man’s fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.
Hush, I stole them out of the moon.
Give me your beads, I want them.
No.
I will howl in the deep lagoon
For your green glass beads, I love them so.
Give them me. Give them.
No.
