Pip

Tony Mitton's first collection, Plum (1998), was splendid, full of fluent, technically accomplished rhyming poems of the kind that children like. Pip, his third book, also has fine accessible poems for children although I can do without the twee moments - poems about matchbox monsters, tiny elephants and dinosaurs and so on. The poetry I hear gets into the verse in more straightforward things, eg in poems like 'Listening in Bed', 'Insect', and 'Pip'. I like the way, in such poems as these particularly, Mitton's sometimes overly anticipatable rhythms get nudged about in response to the subject: 'I can hear / the telly boom / down int he sitting room.' In 'Insect', 'Listen, / and hear / the tiny song / it sings, / as bits of rainbow / glisten / on its wings.' The title-poem, 'Pip' is for me easily the best poem in the collection. It begins: 'Take a tip, pip', and ends 'Look round for room / to grow and bloom. / Then take a trip, pip.'