The Rainmaker Danced

Perhaps the only thing I need to say about this new collection from John Agard is that it is of exactly of the quality you would expect from him. He is one of our best poets for children and adults, whose eye for a subject is unerring and whose joy in language is palpable. Here, sometimes he’s musing on our relationship with nature and on environmental threats in ways that are accessible to quite young children: “Goldfish/goldfish/which glass do you/prefer? A bowl of glass/or a pond that ripples/when the winds pass?” is a poem under the heading More Pointless Questions. Or he’s thinking about death (well, he is getting on a bit) quite cheerfully as a contribution to the earth’s continuing natural cycle: “pushing up daisies to the sky. /What’s that, lad, did you say die?” Or he’s coining appropriate names for giants like Gozzlemorebum the Gozzler. Or he’s imagining the moon transforming herself into a pig (where could he have got that idea from?). It’s a collection, as ever, full of strange connections, wit and wisdom, humanity and hilarity, timeliness and teasing. And, once more, it’s matched with Satoshi Kitamura’s matchless illustrations.