Collection of Nonsense/Comic Verse Available

Hi,

A new collection of Comic/Nonsense Verse, For Children, called, ‘Please Do Not Encourage This Nonsense by Purchasing this Book: Poems By Paul H. Tubb’, is available for purchasing.

23 Poems Not about Football, 11 that are about Football and 5 limericks. Paul H. Tubb has put these together, with some illustrations, into a handy book form so that they can be read at anyone’s leisure. Funny Rhyming poems that will delight Children of all ages. Poems about subjects such as Strange Christmas’s, Tone Deaf Dentists and the worlds worst stuntman among others. To learn more, please click on the link below.

Library Ireland Week

Tomorrow, I am doing my first Poetry/Song Performance of 2009 as part of the Library Ireland Week, and I am looking forward to it immensely. The Performance will be too Children in Malahide Library.

I love visiting the Library and I think it is a wonderful to have a week set aside to acknowledge the wonderful service Libraries provide, but… My first memory with a Library is an unpleasant one… I shall proceed to explain why…

At a young age I was given a position of responsibility that I was obviously not ready for. We lived in a town in Hertfordshire called, Bishops Stortford and to two different tasks had to be attended to, one involved going to the Bishops Stortford Library to return books and this is the task I was given… My Mother asked me to return books to the Library and to meet her outside after she had performed the other task.

Now I was unaware of the etiquette of returning Library books by giving them to a Librarian, obviously I had been to the Library before this, but obviously had never returned books. So I carried these books into the Library and put them on the shelf… Obviously wanting to do the job properly I had to look around the Library to find similar books so they could go in their rightful place, but I remember the ordeal of locating these ‘rightful places’ being quite tormenting and eventually I placed these books anywhere I could.

As I left the Library, my Mother was cross at the length of time it had taken me to return books and we travelled home in silence…

A while later reminders and fines started coming to our house for the books that I was supposed to have returned… My parents were shocked, ‘these books had been returned.’ They reasoned and I could confirm this…

As time went by I learnt how to return books properly and I never owned up to how I had returned the books that first time I ever did it…

But hopefully, my journey to Malahide Library tomorrow will not be as disagreeable as this memory, but this reading is coming after a weekend of unhappy, for me, sporting results…

I will be unable to hide the fact that I am English, and some of the Children may mention the fact that Ireland beat England in the Rugby, but I’m more concerned with the Manchester United Fans amongst them mentioning and taking pleasure in, the fact that their team beat my team, Tottenham Hotspur, in the Final of the Carling Cup today… some of my songs and poems performed mention Tottenham and I let them all know that I am a Tottenham fan, but I’m sure I’ll be able to deal with any gloating coming my way…

To commemorate Library Ireland Week, I wrote a new song called ‘Library Card Blues’, and it can be listened too at my musical myspace page… www.myspace.com/failedrockstar/ I shall be writing another blog about this tomorrow…

Children's Book Festival 2008 Part 2

Day 2 Kilkenny Libraries

Myself and my wife, made our way down to Kilkenny in an evening trip that consisted of Luas, Train and Taxi. It was a tired Poet and his wife that sat on the train.

We dined on the train as we knew I was going to be in no mood to go around searching a city we’ve never been to before for food. Included in this were two bananas which seemed to obsess a man on our train who had had about three cans of Bulmers…

’Have you any Banana’s for us?’ he constantly asked us despite constant negative responses… ‘I want a Banana…’ He repeatedly said.

He got off the train at Carlow and I resolved never to eat a Banana on the train again, it always seemed like an innocent pastime…

We were staying at a guest house called Fanad House, which I will strongly recommend… Lovely nights sleep and even lovelier breakfast with Delayed Coffee.

Brenda from Kilkenny Libraries, picked us up early in the morning and we then were taken to Loughboy Libraries…

47 Children, all of the male gender, came to hear my poems and songs at this library… I think it went exceptionally well… I say think, because due to only having 45 minutes each session and the size of the group I was unable to have the comment sheets filled out during the session so my wife gave them to the teachers and was asked to have them filled out when they got back to school… I thought this was a good idea and I did it for the next sessions as well. Certainly some of the Children told me it went well.

The fact that I am a Tottenham fan and I have to announce this during my football section was met with much amusement due to us being bottom of the premiership, also I was asked to sing songs about many other teams, but I have to say in this blog, that will not be happening.

When I entered the Library I was met with a wonderful display in my honour and this can be seen below.



After the reading, we had the a quick Coffee and some soda bread before we were driven too Graiguenamanagh library, and again I read to a group of Boy’s which I can, again, only assume went well. During the Limerick section, I had a queue of Boys wanting my autograph, which obviously pleased me. With this session and the Baldoyle Library reading, I have started to have a Q & A session afterwards, they go well, I think I’ll keep it in.

After this reading, we were taken by the Librarians to a nice, again recommended if anyone is in Graiguenamanagh, coffee shop/café called The Coffee High.

The next group re-balanced the gender audience as they were all girls and again a wonderful reading was had… There was an enquiry as to whether my stuff can be viewed on youtube, and I responded in the positive. After the reading a couple of Girls stayed behind in the library to look at the internet and I saw that they were on youtube, I was hoping they were looking up my stuff, but it was actually the Jonas Brothers, oh well.

Graiguenamanagh is a lovely town, and after the reading my wife went to photograph the river, whilst I wet to an Antiquarian Book Store in the town.

We decided to stay in Kilkenny an extra night as neither myself or my wife had been there, and we ended up having a wonderful time visiting the castle and also I had my first taste of tapas at a lovely tapas restaurant (again recommended) called Grapevine… We left Kilkenny deciding we are definitely going back in the near future…

Dangers of Living in Dublin

So, I am now a resident of Dublin’s Fair City where the Girls may be pretty but the Soap Opera that has taken its name from the song is terrible, probably the worst programme ever viewed on a television screen… But that really is beside the point… So what is the point I hear absolutely no-one ask?

Well this is just a blog to tell anyone who stumbles onto my words that I have moved to Dublin in the last week and I am enjoying it so far… Hopefully the artistic side to the City will open up more for me and my wife now…

Although we have already had one scare whilst living in Dublin… Last Sunday, our first day in Dublin, we decided to go into town and watch ‘Indiana Jones’ (excellent film but that is not important for this blogs purpose) and we were sitting on the last Dart home when there came an announcement telling us that the train will be waiting there for a while to accommodate the Concert goers, ‘Concert Goers?’ I wondered, ‘Who are these concert goers’ asking the same question to my wife who also didn’t know I suddenly remembered that Westlife were playing at Croke Park and I became panicked at the thought of the train being descended on by a whole group of Mad Hyper-upped Westlife fans… I started to run up and down the carriage screaming in panic until my wife told me to sit down and stop over-reacting… After 20 minutes the train left with absolutely nobody getting on, I let out a relieved sigh and realised I was safe… I also came up with the conclusion that Westlife fans do not use public transport and are therefore bad for the Environment, why Aren’t Madonna and Al Gore campaigning to ban Westlife? (Just a joke)

Anyway, looking forward to living in Dublin… In honour of the start of the Euro Championship today, I include a football poem with this blog.

Frank Zachary Frumpet

Frank Zachary Frumpet flew to France
To see his Favourite Football team play.
It cost him a lot of money
To fly over for a day.
It was the first leg of a European game
And his high hopes were held.
He’d been resting his voice for the past two days
So clear instructions could be yelled.
He fed on frog legs and fish
Before finding his way to the ground.
When he got there he thought it was strange,
As he couldn’t hear any sound.
He found someone he could ask
And said, ‘I hear no sound at all
Where’s the traffic and the fan’s
Who paid to see the football.
The man replied, ‘But Monsieur
A mistake you have clearly made
The first leg is in England,
Here’s where the second leg’s to be played.
Your journey need not be wasted,
Now you’ve the perfect opportunity
To use this mistake to your advantage
And see some more of my country.’
So Frank he took a holiday
And more of France he did see
But he knew that from now on
He’d check his tickets more carefully.

Poetry Now Festival

Had an exceptionally wonderful Poetry Now Festival, if anyone is interested, even if you aren't it was still a success. A very different experience to other festivals I've done. I was on a bill, it was in a theatre, I was required to attend a sound-check ½ an hour before my performance.

Myself and George Szirtes read to around 300 extremely well-behaved 8-11 year olds who asked questions and were exceptionally enthusiastic… Overall it was fantastic seeing so many Children into poetry and enjoying the experience… Comments were made on this subject by the many festival organisers and the whole programme, lasting weeks, was put together by Children's Author Lucinda Jacob, who did a wonderful job… My poems about football went down really well, although not the fact that I support Tottenham Hotspur...

On the first night we got there, we joined all the other poets and the various organisers, judges etc, for a wonderful pre-arranged dinner, talking with poets and thinkers, I felt quite out of place, but the food was nice. Then we attended Ruth Padel giving the keynote address regarding the importance of the tussle between thought and sound that is the heart of a poem.

My reading was the following day in the morning, and afterwards I was feeling exceptionally good, that not even certain attitudes of some panel members in the live debate, 'Who reads Poetry Anyway' could depress me. There were some unfortunate attitudes about young people not being important in the future of Poetry amongst other things…

We had our second poetic ensemble meal at the GastroPub on Friday afternoon… It was a very pleasant experience apart from the fact that Cork born poet Bernard O'Donoghue kept pinching my wife's chips…

The Festival ended for me by seeing Seamus Heaney and CD Wright read, Smoking a Cigar and chatting to various people in the bar, Sleeping, eating breakfast and then leaving the hotel and cursing the fact that we weren't staying for the Saturday and Sunday to see more readings/events.

The festival was a wonderful experience where myself and my wife met many wonderful people and was topped off with a wonderful reading to the Children…

Of course the Panel aren't the only people to be dismissive of poetry for Young people, The Irish Times, who are associated with the event, had an article on Thursday about the festival without any mention of the Children's reading. Maybe the Journalist, Fiona McCann, felt poetry for Children, especially comic/nonsense verse, was beneath her to mention… Who knows?

Poetry Now

Friday 4th April 2008, is the day that I will be doing my reading as part of the DLR Poetry Now Festival (www.poetrynow.ie). That’s right, it’s getting closer and I have been looking forward to it since I found out about it in January…

Therefore there is something ironic about the title of the festival… It is indicated within the title that the Poetry should be straight away… Right Now… no waiting… yet I have been looking forward to this for almost three months now and my anticipation has been getting higher and higher…

As my life is one long search for irony, I have decided that I am going to commemorate this in verse and present it to the Children I read to as part of the festival… I will put it as part of my blog when this has been achieved…

For the time being I will leave you with the following poem…

Miniature Melanie from Melton Mowbray

Miniature Melanie from Melton Mowbray
May have been small but she could really play
A mean game of football. She played in the park
With her friends, Michael, Matthew and her brother Mark.
More and More people came to join in,
But they’d get upset as her team always did win.
And they couldn’t believe that this small female
Showed such great skill that they all did fail
To take the ball off her, she just couldn’t be caught,
If she was in danger, as a last resort,
She could run through their legs, due to her size
And she’d be away before her opponent would realise.
But the fact that her team was always triumphant
Didn’t always work out the way Melanie did want
Sometimes no one would turn up at all
And all she wanted to do was to play football.
So she goes home and is upset,
But she has a plan that she uses to get
The boy’s playing football with her again,
She plays really badly on purpose and then
They are all happy and after a while
Melanie decides it’s time to turn on the style.
She plays really well and it always does seem
That the best team to play for is Melanie’s team.
But the other team soon get fed-up of losing,
So not playing football’s the decision they are choosing.
So Melanie play’s badly again and I think it’s a shame
That she has to do this just too get a game.