Childhood

Popular contemporary author, George R.R. Martin, once said: “Summer will end soon, and my childhood as well.” The six poems discussed explore the different aspects of childhood, and portray childhood as a brief but magical ‘summer’-time, especially Piano and Hide and Seek, which emphasize this by alluding to the constrictions of adulthood and the warmth of juvenescence. While Gareth Owen’s Salford Road avoids any portrayals of adulthood, it might map the progression of childhood to adulthood like Vernon Scannell’s Hide and Seek, and thus accentuate the carefree lives that children lead. Meanwhile, Half Past Two by UA Fanthorpe and Houses by Robert Hull focus instead on the freedom and creativity childhood brings, and therefore presents the theme of childhood in a more playful light reminiscent of Martin’s summer. Finally, Soap Suds by Louis Macniece brings the briefness of childhood into focus, much like summer in the span of a year.

In the poem Half Past Two, a young child is in detention, to be let out at ‘half past two’. The room and his detention become a fairytale-like adventure, which Fanthorpe signals in the opening with the phrase ‘Once upon a time’, the typical start of childhood fairytales. The magical experience mostly stems from the boy’s ignorance of the concept of time: completely unacquainted with the idea of numerical time, he uses his own language to make it understandable to himself. Like a fairytale story, he introduces a beast, a clock personified: an alien with ‘little eyes’ and ‘two long legs for walking’, whose language he cannot ‘click’. The fairytale diction used and the imaginative clock-person he conjures is the essence of childhood: creative and magical at once.

The fact that incomprehension is key ...

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...ies, the ‘soap suds’ ‘dissolve in turn’, highlighting the briefness of the moment, like the summer in the span of a year.

In conclusion, although childhood is the main theme within all these poems, each reflects upon on a certain aspect of childhood. Half Past Two and Houses both dwell upon the creativity of childhood and the freedom it brings to children, who reside within ‘clockless land’ free of the responsibilities adulthood brings in Piano. Hide and Seek and Salford Road both seek to show us the process of growing up, and while Hide and Seek refers to the negative aspects of adulthood, Salford Road seems to represent the path to adulthood that all children must eventually go down. Finally Piano and Soap Suds brings to light the briefness of childhood, in addition the cherished memories that ‘summer’ brings to which all can escape to find solace and comfort.