The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Gabriel’s Really Rotten Rhymes hit sweet spot with younger readers
Mercier Press reissue Gabriel Fitzmaurice’s hilarious and much-loved book of rude good verse for kids in striking new illustrated collection
SHUCKING snots like oysters, eating spiders, blowing noses in tea towels, relatives caked in dirt, monkeys piddling with unerring accuracy – no wonder at least one nun took a very dim view indeed of Gabriel Fitzmaurice’s Really Rotten Rhymes.
Right-thinking Sisters aside, its impact on the young since it was first published in 2007 has been to the immense benefit of their little brains – always encouraging them to keep reading.
In fact, many learning support and resource teachers have described it as a ‘Godsend’. It’s the one book they can always bank on getting through to pupils with, even when they are at their most exhausted, hours into the lessons.
Bursting with life in all its greenfluid-filled vibrancy from the get go, Really Rotten Rhymes trips off the tongue with the unerring rhyme and meter of a master.
Now, in a striking and larger new volume from Mercier Press, complete with suitably hilarious illustrations by Alice Coleman, it’s set to win new generations of fans.
“How it came about was that the editor of Mercier Press, Aisling Lyons, had noticed how significant the feedback they would get was for the one or two ‘rotten’ rhymes for children I might have in a book of 60 poems or so. Aisling asked would I ever consider doing a book of rotten rhymes. So I came up with the book but had no title,” Gabriel explained.
Then Principal of Murhur NS in his native Moyvane, Gabriel knew who best to roadtest the new material on: “I was teaching first and second class in Moyvane, and would always read the poems to the kids without telling them it was me writing it as they would simply have told me the poems were great. If they liked a poem, I would use, if they didn’t I wouldn’t use it, It was as simple as that. So I got the book together, we had a brain storming session for the title while reading them out one day when one of the girls, Tina Gormley I think it was, just came out with the title like that, ‘Really Rotten Rhymes!”
She fairly nailed it. A quick glance at titles like ‘A Pimple on your Backside’; ‘A Stinky Poem’; ‘Do Teachers Fart?’; ‘Did You Ever Eat a Worm?’ fail to convey the full, techni-coloured glory of the verse.
Some educators were right quick on the uptake, though. Not long after the smaller publication came out in 2007, Gabriel enjoyed a choice welcome to a Limerick primary as he arrived to talk about writing. “I remember I was met by a Nun who told me in no uncertain terms: ‘Remember now Mr Fitzmaurice, you are here as a principal teacher and not as a poet’!”
But the kids loved the verse to bits: “I’ve been going around to schools under the Writers in Schools Scheme for the last 30 years, particularly for the last 12 since I retired, and many learning-support teachers have told me that when their pupils refuse to read books, they will read Really Rotten Rhymes every single time. They said it was a ‘Godsend’, but evidently as against that some people would be squeamish about it.”
His own grandchildren are among its biggest fans. Eldest granddaughter Katie Crowley – who was the star of his last published collection of poetry ‘Katie’ – loved it growing up, and now her younger brothers, Paddy and Jack, are reaching for it every chance they get. “Katie, who is 10 now, loves this new edition. Her brothers, Paddy and Jack, are six and three. Paddy is beginning to read, and they will bring the book up to me and say ‘read that’ pointing at one of the pictures. They are so interested in Alice Coleman’s pictures, they want to hear the poem. Alice did a great job of it by the way, she obviously got exactly what I was about with it.” None of these latest publications have yet to see Gabriel break his 2016 vow he would produce no fresh verse in A Farewell to Poetry: “People ask me ‘why’? Being a grandfather definitely has something to do with it, as I’m so damn happy I don’t feel the need to get poems out any longer,” he said.