An unlikely relationship with poetry?
While Jim has enthusiastically written verse over the years, he admits he’s never been particularly committed to reading poetry, however acclaimed the writer might be. Jim was an evacuee during the Second World War, and while some classes were held in the nearby grammar school, he says he had a sparse wartime education, with no conventional English classes that would have introduced him to poetry in a formal sense, beyond a bit of Shakespeare.
Despite this, Jim and his fellow students were asked to produce poetry of their own, allowing them to be creative with rhymes. Jim isn’t entirely sure when poetry re-entered his life, but he thinks it might be when he had young children of his own who’d bring nursery rhymes back from school to read at home. When they did, Jim would take the opportunity to write versions of his own, replicating their metre, often with his tongue in his cheek.
At Christmas time, for example, he’d pen lines like ‘Jingle Bells / Jingle Bells / Santa’s on his way / But you can’t hear him in his new electric sleigh’, much to the amusement of his children.
“That might sound strange or silly as a way of writing,” suggests Jim, “but that’s what I did, and how my interest developed.”
Over the years, Jim has immortalised many events and family celebrations in verse – from the birth of his grandchildren to landmark birthdays. On his wife Daphne’s 90th birthday, for instance, Jim produced the following affectionate ode to the woman he’s now been married to for 75 years.
