I always groan when people ask about my writing process, because what they are really asking is the more complicated question, “How does your mind work?” Even the word “process” confounds me. It implies a tidy, shrink-wrapped procedure. I wish it was that way–a specific set of steps to get me from that awful first draft to a polished manuscript, which is often thirty rewrites down the line. For me, writing isn’t precise. It is a messy evolution.
In the audio clip below, author Karen Hesse reads from her Newbery-winning novel Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997), which is written as a poetry cycle. Hesse shares a poem that describes a rare rain during the time of the…
In her book Diamond Willow (FSG, 2008), Helen Frost arranges the text of her poems into shapes that relate to the book’s theme. Frost also bolds the text of certain words so there is a hidden message, or poem-within-the poem,…
Some poems in Angela Johnson’s book The Other Side: Shorter Poems (Scholastic 1998) were written when she was a teen, and others when she was older. It’s inspiring that poems written during Johnson’s teenage years were eventually published and…
Robert Frost performs his poem “Birches” in this audio clip. I enjoyed hearing how this famous poet’s voice actually sounds as well as how Frost chooses to pace his poem. Wouldn’t this be interesting audio to share and discuss with…
This week I’m considering an audio-visual approach to poetry. Listen to illustrator R. Gregory Christie discuss how he approached the creative task of illustrating children’s poems in The Palm of My Heart (Lee and Low, 1996). Next, have students illustrate…