Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
What poems or verse do you know by heart?...
...Please give the source of the poem if you can.
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Unfortunately NZ's cultural poetry is not nearly as rich as that of our Strine speaking neighbors across the Tasman Sea, but one of NZ's better such poets was Denis Glover who died in 1980. Even then his best known poem is tied together by the call of the Australian Magpie bird
. Below is one of his less well known ones and being written for children is short and easy to recall by the likes of me who do not get along well with other than straightforward cultural poetry.
It is set at Sumner Beach, Sumner being a Christchurch, NZ suburb and nearby Scarborough Head has the suburb of Scarborough on it. I suspect it was written during the 1930s or 1940. It is still in copyright everywhere so below is the first verse and a bit; if anyone is interested, the authorized whole, together with an old recording of Glover reading it, is at
https://poetryarchive.org/poem/child/
For a Child
Cave Rock is made of toffee
And the sea of lemonade
And the little waitress wavelets
Are always on parade
When cars roll down to Sumner
On a Sunday
The ice-cream mountain on the blue
Is free for anyone,
And Scarborough Head looms solid
As a tearoom tuppeny bun... etc.