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CHILDREN'S VOICES

Guest Editor JILL DAWSON introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of children's voices

WHAT is the texture of being ten? What is the colour, the sound, the taste of being ten? This is the beginning of a creative writing workshop I’ve run many times: I’m sure Mslexia readers are familiar with it. I learned it from the novelist Alison Fell at a creative writing workshop in l984 and I’ve used it a lot since, as it’s the quickest way I know to gain access to memories. The texture of a velvet cushion rubbed the wrong way with a finger nail, the taste of a sherbet dip-dab, the sound of a ball bouncing against a wall instantly conjure up a particular childhood. Specific concrete details also seem to help writers avoid the worst and most frequently deployed failings in writing as a child: sentimentality and poverty of truth.

Hilary Mantel, whose memoir Giving Up the Ghost contains a searing account of a childhood, says: ‘If you say to someone “Tell me five things about you when you were five years old,” then from many you will elicit a few bald and fumbling facts. But if you ask them, “What did you have to eat when you were five?” the effect, after a moment, is quite different. The adult slips away and the child appears, wide-eyed and gleeful, reporting back to you with sensual precision.’

Of course for a fictional character, memories might not be what are needed, but imagination too, works better when skewered with this ‘sensual precision’. Something doesn’t have to have been experienced to feel ‘true’ and this is the kind of truth I’m talking about. My favourite novels from the point of view of a child are Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and William Maxwell’s So Long See You Tomorrow. Both of these are narrated by an adult looking back, so are honest about the retrospective position taken up. But both move seamlessly between adult and child’s perspectives and, in each case, never a wrong note is struck. Atwood is a genius on the details of toys, phrases and games, not to mention the undertow to childhood: the moods, emotions and flavour of it all. Maxwell’s description of a boy’s mute grief on the loss of his mother is exquisite and unsurpassed.

For the complete essay, and for Jill's full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of children's voices, read issue 29 • Subscribe!

Read a story chosen by
Jill Dawson:

Sputnik
by Jane Rusbridge

For more on JILL DAWSON, go to www.jilldawson.co.uk