A Rasher of Poems for Snarkey Children
by Russell Bittner

Habeas Corpus

Habeas Corpus
he's our man;
If we can't have him
nobody can

Fourteen Letter Words

Little Miss Muffett

BITTNER: Little Miss Muffet and Nolens Volens

Two mischievous poems turn childhood defiance into verbal play. Little Miss Muffet answers the world with wit and suspicion, while Nolens Volens stages bedtime as a grand philosophical rebellion destined to collapse beneath bears, pillows and sleep. Russell Bittner combines nursery-rhyme rhythms, wordplay and comic argument to create poems that are clever enough for adults and unruly enough for children.

Little Miss Muffet — Russell Bittner
A familiar nursery-rhyme figure is recast as sharp-tongued, suspicious and entirely capable of defending herself. Bittner plays gleefully with rhyme, nonsense and verbal sparring as Little Miss Muffet refuses to be charmed, patronised or easily impressed.

Bedtime becomes a comic battle of wills between a reluctant child, his equally resistant imaginary companion and a mother who knows exactly how the argument will end. Full of linguistic jokes, nursery-rhyme echoes and mock-serious rebellion, the poem follows resistance all the way to the inevitable comforts of sleep.

Hurly Burly and Had a Dog More Like a Sheep

The Rain that Wears no Raincoat and What Warmth Is There in One Old Tree?

Two playful poems by Russell Bittner take on rain, cold and the general inconvenience of weather with wit, rhyme and a stubborn refusal to be put out.

In This Rain That Wears No Raincoat, the rain itself becomes a swaggering opponent, while What Warmth Is There in One Old Tree? searches through trees, lakes, ponds and an increasingly eccentric week for somewhere warm to hide. Both poems find their answer in companionship: whatever the weather is doing outside, good company remains its own kind of shelter.

Russell Bittner turns bad weather into a comic adversary in This Rain That Wears No Raincoat. Rain becomes wilful, badly behaved and almost theatrical, while the speaker meets it with equal stubbornness. Beneath the wordplay and jaunty rhyme sits a small declaration of independence: weather may fall where it likes, but it need not govern the spirit.

In What Warmth Is There in One Old Tree?, Russell Bittner sends two companions through a wonderfully improbable week of trees, tea, lakes, ponds, toads, fish and weather. The poem tumbles forward on rhyme, invention and affectionate absurdity, always circling back to the simplest comfort of all: finding somewhere warm, and someone with whom to shelter.