Answers to Some of the Questions I’m Often Asked
How did you get started writing?
I got started writing by sitting up in a tree, looking out over the meadow and
reservoir across from my home, and thinking about what I saw. I did this when
I was about ten years old. Once, I saw a fox leaping and dancing in the meadow.
His coat gleamed in the sun and he seemed to be doing a ballet. Later, I realized
he was probably just trying to catch a mouse – but at the time it seemed like a
ballet . . .and I wrote a poem about it. Later, when I grew up, I wrote another
poem about the same thing and called it “Prey Ballet.” It’s in my first book,
The Apple Vendor’s Fair.
Do poets make a lot of money?
Most don’t, but a few – a very few – do. Hardly anyone writes poetry
in order
to make money. They do it for the love of it and for the fun of doing
it. For me,
a big reward is thinking about kids reading my books and maybe being
inspired
to try writing poetry themselves.
Where do you get your ideas?
Everywhere! From things I do, things I see, things I hear. I’ve
gotten ideas from
gravel paths, from a starfish, from my dad’s apple orchard, from
the sight of a
chair sitting unsat on in a sunny room. Anything can lead to a poem
. . .a rhythm
that gets going in my head, maybe the sound of my horse’s hooves, clipclop-
clippity-clopping down the road, a couple of words overheard in a conversation.
Poem ideas are everywhere; you have to listen and watch for them.
Do you ever get stuck?
Lots of times! When I’m stuck, I might go for a walk, or paint pictures, or work in the garden…doing things like this seems to free up my mind so that I can think clearer afterwards. Or I might brainstorm lists of words, title possibilities, ideas for poems. Or maybe I’ll read, which often unsticks me! Don’t worry about it. Everybody gets stuck now and then. Not thinking about your project for a while sometimes helps you to think!
What are the steps in writing a poem?
There really aren’t any rules or steps for writing a poem. For me, sometimes a poem starts with a sound I hear, or a bit of conversation, or a rhythm, or with something I see. Sometimes a few words that sound like the start of a poem come into my head and I work from there. I usually just write stuff down, cross out, add more, change words, rearrange the lines, and then let the whole thing sit for a while. Maybe just a little while…maybe a long time. Then, I look at it again, and start all over. Or sometimes it sounds just right and I don’t have to do a thing more --except think up a title if I don’t already have one. Lots of times I don’t know what the poem is going to be about until I’ve written it! It changes as I go along. Once I started to write a poem about our cellar and it turned out to be about a cat and mouse!
How do you decide what shape to make your poem?
Making shapes for a poem is fun! It’s one of the things that sets a poem apart from prose --a poem looks different on the page. I play with the shape…try it different ways. Lots of times, I try to have the shape reflect the subject --a long, curved shape for a snake poem, a heavy, boxy shape for an elephant poem. Some poems seem just to want to be in a simple stanza shape. Others, like my poem “Minnows” in EARTHMATES want to swim all over the page! I experiment with shapes until they both look and sound right. Have fun with shapes! Try a lot of different ways until you get to one that just feels right for that particular poem.
