|
Poet Roundtable with
Children's Poets
8.
AOTW: What advice do you give to aspiring poets? Who do you tell them to read?
Ron Koertge: Aspiring poets need to write every day, and they need to be willing to write badly without embarrassment. There's no one they shouldn't read, except those that flatter their prejudices. A book per week is about right.
Nikki Grimes: I tell them to master the language, first and foremost, because it is their tool. I tell them to read broadly, deeply. The quality of your writing always reflects the quality and depth of your reading. So read, read, read! Read Neruda, Yates, Giovanni, Stafford, Shakespeare, Clifton, Soto, Shihab Nye, Prelutsky, Wong, Yolen, Angelou, Issa, King David's Psalms. Each poet has something to teach you. But don't stop with poetry. Read fiction, essays, biographies, myths and legends, mysteries. Read it all. Your poetry will be the richer for it! And don't worry about losing yourself in someone's style. Your style is like your walk. No one else has it. It's yours, for good and all. Besides, it is only in reading that you discover your true style, your true voice. Second, as you read, write, write, write. Writing is a muscle that must be exercised if it is to become strong.
April Halprin Wayland: I tell them to read everything. Everyone. Especially Alice Schertle. And to write and write and write and write. Write because they want to. Write because they have to. And to be patient. To learn their craft. The founder of Stanford University, Leland Stanford, said, "Get so good at what you love that they'll pay you for it."
In the After Word of my book, Girl Coming in for a Landing, I encourage young writers, listing eight steps of writing that work for me.
I tell them that if they want to get published, if that's important to them, they should compete with peers first. They can go to my website where I have a list for students and writers called "Where can a young writer get published?"
Jane Yolen: I tell them to read EVERYTHING. How do you know what you like until you have tried reading it? I didn't know I would adore Mary Oliver until a friend gave me one of her books. I didn't know Jane Hirschfield's poems until I taught at a writer's conference with her. Ditto Sam Hammill and Marvin Bell.
Andrea Perry: My best advice is to join SCBWI, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, get involved with a critique group, read everything you can that reminds you of your style, and others as well, and read Publishers Weekly, the Horn Book, and then be very, very patient! Rewriting is the full-time job, not writing. I read Ogden Nash, John Ciardi, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, and Joan Graham's shape poetry.
Maria Testa: Find your poetry. Read across the board, read across time, read some anthologies, even read some of that stuff you think is too difficult for you. You'll find what you love. And then you'll write.
Tony Mitton: Just read and write, whatever the obstacles, to start with. And don't take no from publishers or critics. Keep sending the work round and looking for ways of getting your work read and your voice heard. Look hard at your own work, and always consider how you might make it stronger, more effective, in whatever ways. Read anything that calls to you, and absorb its influence into your own work, if that seems like a good idea. Get as wide a sense as possible at first of what poetry can be. Then work at the poetry or poetries that you feel committed to writing. What you admire and what you're good at may not be the same. Sometimes you can emulate what you admire and it works, though you end up with something different in the end. Sometimes you know you just can't do yourself something you love to read. That doesn't mean you can't write something of your own, in a very different kind of voice. What works mostly I think is persistence, commitment and hard work (however you manage to organise that last item). If you really mean to write, you will. The tricky thing then is to get published and circulated in some form. If you mean it, you'll do it. The rest is down to luck and the way things fall out.
Brod Bagert: The best way to learn to write poetry is let the great poets teach you. Find the poems you really like, then memorize and recite them. The voice of one poem gets in your ear and pretty soon you'll hear yourself imitating that voice in your next few poems. Then it gets mixed up with other voices you're imitating and eventually your own voice begins to emerge on its journey toward full power.
And you don't have to limit yourself to "your voice." You can also write in other people's voices. The novelists do it all the time. Every time you read dialogue in a novel, it's a novelists writing in different voices. Can't poets do the same thing?
In the beginning you may write only when you're sad or lonely and that's OK. Most of us start that way. But look for chances to write at other times, like when you're angry, or happy, or confused, or in love.
If you decide to write rhymed poems, write backwards. Write the last part of a rhymed stanza first, then go back and write the beginning of the stanza. And it's OK to use a rhyming dictionary. They now have rhyming software that is very easy to use and very cool.
You don't have to choose between rhymed or unrhymed poems. Play with the idea that you can go into and out of rhyme in the same poem.
Never try to write your "best." Start out by writing your "worst," then write it over and try to make it a little better. Then write it over again and try to make it a little better. And continue rewriting until you can't figure out how to make it better. That's when you know you have written your best. I rewrite my poems twenty, fifty, sometimes a hundred times. The idea that poems come out like dictation from the muse, perfect the first time, is an attractive myth and it sometimes happens, but only rarely. Good poems are more often the result of hard work.
Don't be afraid of failure. We all fail, lots of times. Writing a failed poem can be a powerful learning experience. Remember, a great poet is someone who writes at least one great poem. So write a lot. And don't try to write the great poetry of our language in a year. You may very well be the one, the great poet of the future, the fulfillment of five hundred years of English poetry, but don't expect to do it in ten poems
Poet, learn your craft! When you start writing poetry you should have fun and not worry too much about craft, but if you're serious about writing powerful poetry, eventually you must master the craft. Learn meter and practice the various patterns and stanza forms. Find the weakness and strengths of each. Eventually, when somebody says that Longfellow was crazy to write Evangeline in dactylic hexameter, you should know exactly why. Learn the figures of speech and practice using them. Learn your craft. Learn your craft. Learn your craft.
A poet should have something to say, so become a learner, and by that I mean a life-long, obsessive-compulsive, wallow-in-the-world-wide-web, up-to-your-elbows-in-books, walk-a-mile-to-try-on-a-new-idea learner.
|
