Nonsense Verse

by George K. Mathew

English 112 pages 1 edition

‘What a charming collection of poems this is. From animals to cricket and all sorts in between, I chuckled and chortled my way through. George K. Mathew certainly has an eye for the absurd and a pithy turn of phrase. A gift for young and old.’?Sarah Bourne, author of Never Laugh at Shadows and Two Lives ‘George K. Mathew’s gently amusing verses breathe the spirit of his character?witty, warm and generous. They are a reflection too of the warm-hearted and carefree ethos of the college he taught in?the Madras Christian College?in a more liberal era. Shunning high seriousness, existentialist angst, and political correctness like the plague, these poems reflect collegiate humour of the time: laddish, sporting, lascivious. Not all is slapstick though. The sly humour often reveals a surprisingly sharp edge as we find in the spider’s rebuke to humankind: “When I suck a mosquito that’s fed off your skin,/We’re bonded by blood ties that make us near kin:/Save that, there is little that both of us share:/I am good to our fair Earth, you plunder it bare.” Not taking mankind too seriously, George K. Mathew’s poems pleasingly suggest his genial attitude to human folly in all its ludicrous and laughable shapes.’?Dr Daniel Roberts, Queen’s University Belfast