Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy

This volume combines two titles from the 1980s: You Can’t Catch Me and Don’t Put Mustard in the Custard together with a CD of the author reading the poems. Having heard and seen Mike Rosen perform many of his poems both live and on TV, I always have his voice in my head whenever I open one of his books; and perform is truly what he does. Both as a writer and reader Rosen has that seemingly simple, nevertheless amazing skill, of turning such ordinary everyday incidents as putting on one’s shoes, asking questions or turning off the bedroom light into full blown dramas. As of course, that’s what they really are – at least to the child at the time.

On many occasions as a young teacher back in the eighties I found myself giving silent thanks to the visionary Pam Royds (who first published these titles), when in those heady days of having time to indulge the children and myself in – dare I say it – unplanned sessions of sharing poetry for its own sake, we would allow ourselves ‘just one more’ and another … I recently met a young man who approached me saying, ‘Remember me? I was in your class and you used to read us those funny poems about dogs and dustbins and shoelaces and stuff like that’, so what the author says in his introduction about ‘looking at the poems and pictures as if they’ve had 25 years of life’ is most certainly true. Here’s to the next 25 and a lot more pleasure in poetry for its own sake.