Poster poems: nursery rhymes

The rhythms and imagery of childhood verses have inspired poets from Robert Louis Stevenson to Elizabeth Bishop. Now it’s your turn

For most of us, our first exposure to the joys of verse was when we listened to parents or teachers reciting nursery rhymes and learned to repeat them ourselves. The pleasure in rhyme, rhythm, image and repetition that kids derive from these poems is sometimes lost as we grow older, but for most of us it never fully goes away; it morphs into a delight in song, or indeed poetry.

Given the hold they can have over our imaginations, it’s hardly surprising many poets have drawn on nursery rhymes as a source of inspiration. Sometimes this results in a poem that is closely based on a particular rhyme, in other instances it can be more to do with a general tone.

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