Latest news with #TheFirstYear
Telegraph
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A children's novel in verse? It works a treat
A generation ago, children's novels written in verse were something of a rarity. But in 2019, they made up almost half the novels shortlisted for the Carnegie medal – and this uplifting story by Matt Goodfellow is the genre's latest gem. Goodfellow's first novel, The Final Year (2023), used blank verse, spoken in the first person, to relate the experiences of a working-class boy called Nate during his last year at primary school. The First Year uses the same format, resuming the story as Nate prepares to start secondary school. Nate has not had it easy. When we first met him, his younger brother was suffering from a life-threatening heart condition, his single mother was struggling to cope, and Nate's emotions all too often found expression in an anger which he named 'The Beast'. But, as The First Year begins, things are looking up. Nate's brother is better, and his home life has stabilised a little: 'I've noticed Mum smoking a bit less / there's more food in the cupboards / and not as much booze about …. Sometimes Mum actually wakes me up with a brew / and a bacon butty … / I like it! ' When Nate starts at his new school, much of the narrative focuses on issues that will be familiar to every reader. He sets about making new friends, and staying out of trouble: 'I'll sum the rest of the first week up / Rushin. / Rules. / Gettin lost. / Tryin not to die in corridor crushes.' But when the school bully sends Nate's friend 'flyin against the wall', Nate's anger once again threatens to get the better of him: 'The Beast comes outta nowhere / tears along my veins to my fists / fills my brain with flames.' And when the father whom Nate has never met suddenly appears, disappointment inevitably follows. ('When I was proper little / I'd ask Mum / why other kids / had a dad / but I didn't. / Then I learned / to stop askin / cos I hated / seein her cry.') Goodfellow is brilliant at capturing the voice of his young speaker who, as with all the best schoolboy narrators, combines innocence with a beady eye for observation. And yet Nate is no average 11-year-old. He can recognise a swift (they 'whirl and swirl / like crazy little fighter jets, / sunlight glintin on their underwings'), and he has an empathy beyond his years, which extends even to the boy who has been bullying him. (His father is 'a proper wrong 'un'; and 'if that's what he's been around / then that's what he's gonna become.') In lesser hands, Nate might seem too good a narrator to be true. But Goodfellow writes with acuity, giving us a coming-of-age novel which combines kitchen sink realism with a feel-good factor reminiscent of Paddington Bear.
CBC
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Chimwemwe Undi discovers the importance of looking in life's rear-view mirror in new poem
The First Year is an original poem by Chimwemwe Undi. It is part of Mirrors, a special series of new, original writing featuring work by the English-language winners of the 2024 Governor General's Literary Awards, presented in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts. "The theme of mirrors conjured for me the experience of looking at yourself in the mirror and noticing more clearly something that was behind you. From there, I was drawn back to a pre-existing preoccupation of mine, which is the role that personal, family and world history have on a person's ability or willingness to contend with the world as it is today," Undi told CBC Books. Undi won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry for Scientific Marvel. The First Year In the first year that those years could be called the past the past still bloomed at the borders and in the graveyards and the graveyards were the streets where my uncles died like dogs. In that first year, that first blush of history, I was born, scaled, unscathed, aspiring to nuance. I took my Gogo's name and a lamb was slaughtered in the world and in the name of god, and the name meant lamb. In that first year, that first blush of history, I was born, scaled, unscathed, aspiring to nuance. In my dreams, my screens are windows. Even here, where I pass my tassel and into the new school of unmaking. Taught to peddle in precedent & abstraction (what has happened should happen) (what exactly do you mean by happening?) Here, in the Black I was born unto, newly history, the new and hollow sound, Even in my dreams I learn the truth is something that you sigh. I learn to loosen fists and lower quiet hands to hold myself to let knit fingers slip pause pointer over empty sentiments left unrepeated all my questions in the other room. The word apartheid is in Afrikaans so when I say it, it reminds me what it did. The word apartheid is in Afrikaans so when I say it, it reminds me what it did. It was a long war, and it is still going. You can taste it in the fruit. About Chimwemwe Undi Chimwemwe Undi is a Winnipeg-based poet, editor and lawyer. She was recently announced as Canada's 11th parliamentary poet laureate and was the Winnipeg Poet Laureate for 2023 and 2024. Undi was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize. She won the 2022 John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award from the Manitoba Book Awards and her work can be found in Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Literature and BBC World, among others. The English-language books that won the 2024 Governor General's Literary Awards demonstrate how stories help us reflect on our lives, understand ourselves more deeply and see the world in new ways. CBC Books asked the winners to further explore the power of reflection in original works. The special series, themed around the theme of mirrors, challenges how we see ourselves and our society — unearthing hidden truths, exploring alternative identities and blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
