Underwater Farmyard

In the hands of Carol Ann Duffy and Joel Stewart, the unlikely subject of the underwater farmyard makes an astonishing and delightful picture book. The poet’s skill, gentle humour, word play, and careful musical rhyme scheme are matched by pictures of ethereal balance, in which smiling sheep and pigs float by in a daft but perfect choreography. I wish I could quote it all, but here’s one verse:

Under the deep wet meadows of the Blue

A herd of sea-cows float and moo,

Milked by a mermaid

On a shell milk stool.

The cows are smiling – her hands are cool!

This is accompanied by an illustration of the mermaid posed on her twisting shell, busily milking, with her hair flowing like a scarf, and the cow, with her ears at right angles to her head, in an expression of absolute ecstasy. The joy is repeated page after page, the poet and the artist’s conviction and craft defying sense and logic and creating enchantment.