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Poet Roundtable with
Children's Poets
4.
AOTW: What got you started writing poetry? Was it a poem you read? If so, which one?
Tony Mitton: I first encountered poetry at school (or that's what I can remember). Though my Dad used to have one or two chants and rhymes that he used at bath time when I was very little, so maybe that was my first experience. Anyway, we used to have to learn and recite poems as an English exercise, and when we were asked to attempt to write poems of my own, I took to it quite naturally. So I guess I had some leaning toward it by nature. A poem I recall being really stirred by somewhere between 9 - 12 was Walter de la Mare's poem, "The Listeners," a very romantic, atmospheric kind of piece, full of drama & mystery and poetic device and rhetoric. And R. L. Stevenson's "Windy Nights" in A Child's Garden of Verses. Later I recall being very impressed by W. B. Yates's "Innisfree" and "The Song of Wandering Aengus." I think being powerfully impressed by single poems can trigger or evoke a desire in one to make something similar, "something like that."
Andrea Perry: My mother raised us on a pretty steady diet of Dr. Seuss, so I grew up with a love of rhyme. My signature gift to friends or family for special occasions was always a silly poem about them and whatever event we were celebrating. But I didn't think that defined me as a poet per se. I would have to say that my serious attempts at writing poems to be published did not come until much much later in life after taking a children's writing course. Even then I wrote for magazines and anthologies for years before having this first poetry collection of mine published.
Brod Bagert: I wrote my first poem in third grade. My teacher, Mrs. Toups, performed "Trees" by Joyce Kilmer, and told us that poets write words that last forever. So when my mother got very sick and I wrote a poem to tell her, in words that would last forever, that I loved her. This is the poem. You'll notice it's very much like
"Roses are red violets are blue."
The wind is blowing,
The sky is blue,
But no matter what happens,
I'll always love you.
In high school and college I wrote lots of poems, mostly to get girls to like me. This is something every red-blooded American male should know --- women love poetry!
Then I grew up, got married, became a lawyer, was elected to public office and almost forgot about poetry until something wonderful happened. My daughter, Colette, needed a poem to recite in a school program and insisted I write one that was "perfect" for her to perform. I wrote a poem in her voice called "The Night I Caught the Burglars." Colette won a blue ribbon for her performance and I rediscovered how much I loved to write poetry. I continued to write and, twelve years later, I closed my law office and became a full time poet. Life is full of surprises.
Ron Koertge: I discovered pretty early (age 16 or so) that I had a knack for writing, but there wasn't any one poem that kick-started me.
Jane Yolen: My mother read me nursery rhymes and great poems as well --- and I was off. Not one poem, but MANY became my constant partners.
Maria Testa: I've always been a reader and a writer, even during times when I would not have consciously defined myself as either. While I have experimented with writing poetry throughout my life, it was only a few years ago, when I discovered Lee Bennett Hopkins' Been To Yesterdays, that I realized the new book I was writing needed to be a book of poems --- Becoming Joe DiMaggio.
Nikki Grimes: I came to poetry through the process of word-play. My experience of poetry was purely organic. When I was six, I fell in love with words. I'd do word jumbles, and word puzzles and make up my own word games. I was fascinated by the notion that one word could mean several different things, depending on the context, and I would experiment with those meanings and shades of meaning, and end up by painting a picture, or telling a story using those words. It was a challenge. It was fun. It was also an important emotional outlet for me. For years, reading books and writing poetry were my survival tools. My formal experience of reading poetry came later.
April Halprin Wayland: I always played with words, but the book that pushed me off the proverbial cliff was Lawrence Ferlinghetti's book A Coney Island of the Mind. Someone gave it to me when I was thirteen. WOW. You can write poems like THAT???? Wow! The poem in the book that changed my life was called "Dog." This is the first poem I truly adored. I did a modern dance to it in high school --- I wore a leotard and our dog's collar around my neck...it still makes me light up every time I read it.
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