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Title: Kwame Alexander interview
Date: 2015-10-21
Description: Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, New York Times bestselling author of 21 books, and recipient of the 2015 Newbery Medal for his novel, The Crossover.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: AlexanderKwame_20151021
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Kwame Alexander ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Kwame Alexander on October 21, 2015, in the Special Collections Conference Room, Western Libraries in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: So we are here with Kwame Alexander, who is in Bellingham for several days for the Compass 2 Campus program, as well as lunch with Western students and high school students, and this evening is giving a community presentation. NJ: Sponsored by PoetryCHaT. KA: Welcome to Fresh Air, with Nancy and Sylvia, and Kwame Alexander. ST: If only I was as smart as Terry Gross. NJ: Yeah, really. ST: So, in the tradition that we’re trying to start with these oral histories, we’re hoping that you can talk freely, and we’ll see where it goes. And just kind of a free flow conversation opportunity for you to kind of riff on your own thought process, writing process, what you -NJ: History as a writer. ST: -- some of the insights you have about your own books, interactions, intersections. So we could start out with just some of this. We were just looking at some of the titles, and I was just noticing, myself, some of the interplay between the books. NJ: Are you even aware that you do that? Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Yes, I’m certainly aware that the poems speak to each other and the books connect with each other. Some of it is intentional. Some of it is like when you get into this sort of rhythm, into this zone of the writing, it just -- it happens, you know. It’s sort of the writerly destiny of it all just takes over, and that’s really exciting. I don’t know how to sort of -- If I could bottle that, it would be wonderful. But I think most of it comes from BIC - Butt In Chair. Like the more you just sit down, and you’re writing, and you’re just living this writerly life, as Langston Hughes’s Jesse B. Semple character used to say, “Everything is connected.” And so the connections sort of find themselves. And it’s kind of cool, it’s exciting, especially when readers like yourself are able to pick up on that. The titles I think are really important to me. I remember my first play that I wrote. It was back in college, and it was a play called Self-Discovery 101: You Gotta Have It. And so, I was at Virginia Tech, and there weren’t a whole lot of black students there, and I really wanted to write a play to talk about what it means to be a black student on a predominantly white campus. And I stayed up all night. I’d never written a play before. I’d read plays, I’d acted in a few plays. I acted in a play on Broadway when I was 13. So at some point, I thought I was going to be an actor. But I was familiar with the theater enough to think that I could write a play. And so I stayed up all night and wrote a play, a two-act play. I remember calling my father about 7:00 in the morning and saying, I wrote a play last night. And I remember him being really excited and telling me, asking me, “What are you going to do with it?” I said, “I’m going to produce the play.” And so I started reading and researching how do you produce a play. And of course you need a director, you need a cast, you need a venue. And so naturally I didn’t have a whole lot of resources at my disposal, so I said, Well, I’ll direct it. I wrote it, I’ll direct it. I’ll get my friends who are in the theater department to act in it, and that was my cast. And then of course I had to find a venue. Well as it turns out, I had received a letter inviting me to a student leadership conference at the College of William and Mary, and that was taking place in about four months. And I said, How cool would that be? They’ve got to have entertainment there, so why not my play as the entertainment? And I’m a sophomore in college, and I remember calling up the director at the College of William and Mary of the student leadership conference and saying, “My name is Kwame Alexander. I’m a playwright at Virginia Tech, and I’d like to offer my play as your entertainment for your student leadership conference.” The sort of the audacity to do something like this is something I was raised with, that level of confidence, to think that the world is at your disposal. And something my father always tells me is that you have to behave and act like you belong in the room. If you don’t believe that you belong in the room, then people are going to notice and you’re not going to be sort of embraced, and there are going to be some opportunities that you’re going to miss. And so I’ve always believed that I belonged in the room, even times when I probably didn’t. But, Dr. Carol Hardy was her name, and she said, “Tell me more about this play.” I said, “It’s about student leadership.” I had all the buzz words. “It’s about black students and how they can, you know, sort of reach their destinies” -- And she said, “Well how much are you charging?” I hadn’t thought that far. I said the biggest number I could come up with. I’m a sophomore, I didn’t have any money, any food in the fridge. “What would be a good amount?” “A thousand dollars.” “Hmm, well, that’s too much.” “Can you do it for $500?” “Yes.” Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections I talked to some friends and so I knew -- I’d written a play, so I knew the number of actors it was going to require, and it was nine. And here I was getting paid $500 for a play that was going to take place three hours, four -- five hours away from my school, and I had to get everyone there, and I had to pay everyone, got to have a place to stay. So I said, “Well, I can do $500, yes, but we’ll need hotel rooms.” She said, “I can give you two rooms.” I said, “Done. And, we’ll need to attend the conference for free.” This conference cost 300 to 400 bucks. And I’d been invited but none of the cast members, I knew, would have been invited. So she agreed to all that. I got my cast together, started rehearsing. The play happened on a Friday night, the opening night of the student leadership conference. It was the main attraction. And I’m 17 years old, I’m thinking, Okay, this is cool. I’m going be a theater minor. My minor was theater. And, the auditorium was 800 people filled. I mean it was exhilarating and it was like, Wow! It was Broadway to me. Like I knew I had arrived (laughter). And we -- the play happened. It went off exactly as we had rehearsed it. It couldn’t have been any better. That is not to say that it was very good, because I only knew so much about the theater. But within the constraints of what I thought was good, it was excellent, at the time. Standing ovation. And of course the students, who were my peers, didn’t know any better either. Standing ovation, the teachers, the professors. The administrator was like, Whoa, what just happened? So, me thinking on my feet, which is another thing that I’ve sort of been groomed to always do. When we were kids we’d be in a grocery store. My father didn’t cook until very later in life, but he shopped. So my sisters and I would be in the grocery store at the checkout line, and he would not let the cashier take an item and ring it up until we could tell him the cost, with the sale and the double coupons. Unless we could tell him what the price was, he wouldn’t let it go through. And this happened for every item. So you had to be able to think very quickly on your feet. And so I remember saying to myself, We’re about to do a question-and-answer. We can do a Q-and-A. And part of it was my ego, like wanting to savor the spotlight. And the standing ovation, and then I said, “Okay, we’re about to have a Q-and-A.” And the actors sat down on stage, and I stood up, and we started taking questions, and it was amazing, the energy in that room. And the whole time I’m answering questions, I’m thinking this is my life. This is what I want to do. I knew it in that moment. I wasn’t able to articulate that it was going to be some combination of writing and presenting, but that’s what I had just done. So I said, this energy, this spirit, this feeling right now, this is what I want to do in my life. And I just got paid $500. It’s a wrap. And so, the Q-and-A goes on for an hour, and it’s 10 o’clock, and people are -- you know, at these kind of conferences for students, Friday night is time to party. So kids, nobody’s like trying to get out of there to go party. They’re staying around asking questions. So one kid asked a question, she’s from Rutgers, and she says, “Kwame, have you thought about taking this play on tour?” And I, come on, I was barely in the room. I barely made it into the room. But my answer was, “Yes, we are doing a tour.” So as she’s saying that, thoughts are going through my head, How can this happen, how can this happen? And so I say, “Well, after everything’s over, tomorrow…” because I knew that my father, who was a book publisher, had a -- Another thing that I’d been able to negotiate was for my father to have a booth, and so he would sell books. So I said, “At booth number Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections so-and-so, I’ll be giving out information on our tour.” So everybody’s like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did something I probably shouldn’t have done. I said, the tour, “It costs $1000 for us to come to your school.” I should have never given the price out in front of 800 people, even though I was sort of married to it. But they clapped again. It was over. And we did an 8-city tour to Rutgers and Fisk and NYU... And it was sort of the first time that I was able to sort of understand that writing is, for me, is more than pen to paper. It has to be writing with sort of the goal of being able to share your words with the world in some profound way, and you now have the capacity to do it. So you don’t have to just write and it ends up in a drawer or under a mattress. You’re going to share your works with the world, and the degree to which you do that is only limited by your vision and your dreams. So you start -- we started with me talking about titles, and of course we ended in another place, in terms of this first experience where I knew I wanted to be a writer and live this writerly life, in all of its different aspects and capacities. But the title for that play was really not that good. I had borrowed it from a Spike Lee movie called She’s Gotta Have It, and so I said, Self-Discovery 101, You Gotta Have It. It seemed pretty cool. I guess the kids liked it. But from that point forward, my titles got progressively better, and so the next couple of titles...there was a title called Ebony Images, another play that I wrote, which was still okay, probably bad. But titles became very important to me. I really wanted titles that A reflected the subject matter of the book, but B, that sort of had a little bit of edgy and coolness to it, and so the titles got a little bit better over the years. I remember a really good friend of mine, my best friend, who was an actor in that first play. He’s always ribbing me about my titles. He’s like, Dude, you don’t know how to come up with titles. That used to be a really sore spot for me. We used to argue about that. And I think, you know, now he’s like a huge fan of my titles. So I think he really inspired me to sort of work on those titles. And so, when you think about - there was a play -- After Ebony Images, there was a play called 8 Minutes Till 9, which was bad, like what does that mean? The play was about a Muslim and a Christian who were twin brothers, and who were trying to figure out how to live in the same space when they had these sort of different, distinctly different, views on religion and the world and spirituality, and their mother. And so their mother -- And they hadn’t spoken in a while -- and their mother was in the hospital on her deathbed, and she died at 8 minutes till 9. Not a very good title. And then my first book of poems, Just Us: Poems and Counterpoems. What are counterpoems? I have no idea. And I think probably -- And then Tough Love: The Life and Death of Tupac Shakur. That’s kind of cliché. I think probably the transition into like really coming up with a title that was concise and represented the book and still had an edginess was the book Crush, and that was 10 years, 10-15 years into my writing. But I think that sort of when I hit my stride, if I can say that, Crush: Love Poems for Teenagers, I felt like it was really simple, it represented what the book was about. It had sort of an edginess to it. Just the word “crush” in and of itself has some energy. And from there I felt like it was on, with the titles. NJ: I am curious as you were just talking about that play, the 10 minutes to 9? KA: 8 Minutes Till 9. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: 8 Minutes Till 9, thank you. It really impressed me -KA: Yes, it’s just, it’s a horrible title. KA: Yes, 25 minutes past 11. NJ: Yes. And (The) Crossover, and twins, mother on a deathbed... Do you find you come back? And what do you come back to in different maybe iterations? KA: Wow. So that’s great, because we’re talking about the books talking to each other. And here’s this play that I wrote that has this direct link to this novel that I wrote, which was 20 years later. And so the thing I didn’t tell you about 8 Minutes Till 9 is that -- this was my third sort of, my third attempt at producing theater, okay. So after that first play had just wild success, as a 17 year-old, of course, I can do this. I can do this now. I will become a theater impresario. And so part of this whole idea of finding your rhythm and saying yes is that there are going to be failures. And I think that, the thing is, you got to be willing to deal with the failures. Like you’ve got to be willing to let those happen, embrace them, and learn from them. And that way you’re able to sort of find what’s possible. And so with 8 Minutes Till 9, it was my third attempt, I felt like I was in a rhythm, and it was now time for me to actually go to Broadway, like literally. NJ: Oh my gosh. KA: And so I found a theater in my home town, in Norfolk, Virginia. It’s called the Norfolk Center Theater, I believe, and I had 800 students in the first play, because the students had been registered for the conference from all around the country, so they were -- that was my audience. I didn’t have to market, just had to show up and do my piece. Well now I had to market to the Norfolk Center Theater, and I remember getting my scholarship money from school, I was now a junior, and I had leftover money. And I decided I’m going to use this money to produce my play. The theater sat 2,000 people. I’m going to do this. Everybody’s going to love this play. And there were 5 people in the audience. And I remember feeling like, or feeling a number of things. Two of the people were my parents. And I remember feeling like it was the end of the world, like it’s a wrap. I mean, just thinking about it right now makes me just want to, wow, it was devastating, because I had done everything I thought that I knew, everything that I thought I had to do in order to bring people out. And certainly a theater with 2,000 people in there and there are 5 people in the audience, there’s no way to sort of think positively about that, especially as a 19 year old, who thinks he wants to be a writer/director/producer. And so I was devastated. ST: So as part of the consequence of having the tremendous confidence and self-assuredness, when it doesn’t happen, it sounds like there’s some extremes going on. I mean, that’s a challenging way to move through the world I imagine. KA: Well again, it’s no way around that. You can’t, I don’t care how much confidence you have, you can’t rationalize there being 5 people in a theater of 2,000, in front of the people you care the most about, and the actors who you promised that this is going to be. And it was just, like you really just felt like you wanted to be in your mother’s arms. You wanted to just be away from the world. And it was Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections the lowest -- it’s one of the lowest points in my writing career. And then the other thing happened, because you can’t take away confidence, 19 years of confidence being instilled in you by your parents and being reinforced daily. That doesn’t just end because you’re devastated. It takes a hit. It doesn’t go down though. And so we did the play. We did the entire play. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Of course I’m only 19, so how many hard things have I done? But when you start looking at the future, in terms of my writing career, it definitely laid a foundation for how I would move through the world, how I would deal with the nos, because that was the biggest no. It’s probably one of the top three biggest nos I’ve ever faced in terms of the rejection that I felt. But we did the play. We did the play. I don’t know how that 2 ½ hours -- I don’t remember how I made it through that 2 ½ hours, but it’s not, you know, we did. And when it was over and I got home, yes, I felt a whole lot better because I was out of that space, and I was able to look back on it, and I knew that I would never be in that position again. I would never be in that position again. I mean, I gave up my scholarship money for this, to produce this. I didn’t, obviously, I didn’t market it and promote it well. And so, yes, yes, yes. And so, to go back to your question and the idea when we look at The Crossover and we have similar sort of themes, in terms of twins, rivalry, parent, parental illness. I kind of I guess when I think back on it, I guess I feel like I never -- that story never got told. And so maybe I needed to be able to close that chapter in some way, and this was sort of a coming full circle. I don’t know, I’m speculating, but I think our subconscious acts in ways that we don’t necessarily know. So when you bring it up, maybe that had something to do with it. I needed to have some closure, because I always felt like it was a great idea. So I needed to circle back and deal with some of that. But oh, I get chills when I think about that theater. It was the hardest thing. But again I mean, we can’t have the yeses without the nos. You can’t have the mountains without the valleys. You just you can’t. The world doesn’t work like that. So, yes, 8 Minutes Till 9. NJ: Music. It’s everywhere, in your work. KA: Yes, the music. I told my parents that I don’t remember music being in our house. I don’t remember you all listening to music. You know, I remember gospel music because my father was a Baptist minister, and so I remember church, and I remember my father didn’t listen to secular music. So he never, I don’t have that recollection of him listening to music outside of church. I remember him trying to sing in the pulpit and sounding horrible. I remember that. I remember my mother humming songs and singing songs around the house, If you want to be happy for the rest of your life... I remember her singing, How much is the doggy in the window? I remember her singing songs like that around the house. I remember that a lot. So I remember those two things. And I remember, certainly, my sisters and I loving Michael Jackson and sort of going through our phases. And then I remember falling asleep at night listening to the oldies but goodies, every night. I had a little alarm clock radio, and so I’d fall asleep, Breaking up is hard to do. Now I know, I know that it’s true. Don’t say that this is the end. Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again. I beg... So I used to listen to these songs. Yes, I guess there was music in my house. There was a lot of music. I used to listen to those songs every night, loved the stories, loved the stories. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections But you know, the music in the books, I think, comes from a couple different places. Obviously it comes from that. But it comes from, I love writing while listening to music. The writing, it centers, it calms me, it inspires me, so I love listening to music, especially instrumental jazz music. The music has to be instrumental. I can’t have words when I’m writing. So I think the biggest thing in terms of why the music is so much a part of my life now, and therefore a part of my writing life, I was a sophomore in college and I’d come home, and again, the only music I ever heard my father embrace was gospel music, and I came home -- and this is a man who didn’t, he never said I loved you. I didn’t hear that. Like you knew he did, but you didn’t ever hear it. He wasn’t very emotive. But he was emotive when he fussed. But you didn’t really get the warm and fuzzy, Oh come here, son, give me a hug. That never happened, ever! So I remember coming home sophomore year and being in our attic. My grandmother used to say that I was a meddler. “Why is that boy always meddling in my stuff?” He’s in my closets and then, “What are you, Ed, come down!” She used to call me by my first name, Edward. “Edward, come downstairs and stop meddling up there.” I loved going in drawers and finding things and being under beds, and there was always little things that you could find, and it was just so cool to me to discover all these wonderful things that you knew had stories, had these sort of backgrounds, these histories...medals in your grandfather’s drawer, and fur coats, oh and fur hats. Oh, my favorite thing was papers, anything that was paper, because papers had things written on them. And whatever was written on them, you knew was going to be something that you didn’t know before. And so you got this sort of peek into these people’s lives who were your family. My grandmother used to say, “Why is he meddling?” And this is both of my grandmothers. My mother’s mother and my father’s mother, I did the same thing. My mother’s mother had an attic where her mother had lived, so it was a whole apartment up there. Oh my goodness! I found watches, encyclopedias, you know, can I say bras? I mean, I found everything, and it was all so exciting! And so, I come home sophomore year and I do what I always do. I’m in our attic, because growing up I’d never discovered everything that was in the attic, so it was always cool to go up there. So maybe I was up there looking for something from my high school days. Everything was in boxes. And I find two crates of records, and I started looking at the records, and the records are like Ella Fitzgerald, Live in Berlin; Duke Ellington; Ornette Coleman; Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain. And I’m like what is this? And I look at the top of each record, and in stencil, which is what these guys in the Air Force used to use to identify their records, it said, Property of The Big Al. And I’m like, That’s my dad. My dad’s nickname in the Air Force was The Big Al. My dad has a record, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” What is my dad doing with Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith? What is he doing with these? And then it hit me, My dad was a huge jazz fan. Anybody who loves jazz has to be okay. That’s when I sort of fell in love with my dad. That was the moment. I took those records back to college. I took them all back to college, bought a record player, and began to just fall in love with jazz music. And it has informed and influenced my writing ever since. And I guess in some way, it’s sort of me, reestablishing or reconnecting with my dad in a really profound way. ST: I don’t know if you could hear your dad while you were giving your Newberry speech, because you were up there, but -KA: I’ve been told. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Oh you have. I loved it! It was -KA: It was church. ST: It was church, and it was -- it was church. He was so loving and so supportive and exhilarating about what was happening. KA: Yes, I think for them, for my mom and dad, the whole, you know, awards, the Newberry Medal in particular, it was -- it was validating for them in some way. Because when I got the call on February 2, at 7:16 a.m., I called him. He was the first person I called. And his response was, “We did it.” Which I was like, Dude, we didn’t do anything. But of course we did. Like I wouldn’t have been getting that call had he not done all that stuff that they did. And my father and I -- again, he wasn’t very emotive, so we didn’t -- We talked every couple months. We had conversations every now and then. It was cool. And as he’d gotten older, we talked a little bit more. But beginning February 2, we talked an hour a day, which is -- I mean, there are some days where I just, I can’t, I can’t do it tonight, Dad. I’ll have to call you tomorrow. But we talked an hour a day. And I think, what better way, what is more important for a parent than to see their child living a life that they have always hoped that they would be able to live. Maybe they didn’t articulate the specific, but that everything we put into you, we see it coming out and we’re very -- we feel good. We’ve done something. And you know, me fighting or me fussing because I have to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and him not being able to understand. Why are you fussing? And me tearing... So there was this phase in my life where we lived in Brooklyn, and we lived in this awesome row house on President Street, between New York and Brooklyn Avenue. It was owned by this older woman who had first editions of quite a few books, Alexander Dumas. She had everything. And she left the books, and there were built-in shelves in every room. So I had a room with built-in shelves everywhere, and I hated it. Because I knew I was going to have to read these freakin’ books. And he made me read them. And so, when he traveled, I would rebel. This is not the kind of thing to share when you’re talking with librarians and English professors. It’s a part of my life. I would take books off the shelves and start tearing pages out. That was my way to rebel. I would only do it when he left town. I wasn’t crazy enough to do it when he was there. To come from that place -ST: And would you get rid of the pages, then, or would they -KA: I don’t remember. I’d tear a page out. I’d tear a page out and then throw the book. My mother would come in. We won’t say what she did, but I had to stop. That was sort of my way. So to come from that place to now be here, I think they’re just very thankful, and my mother said -- I remember my mother saying to my father, “Where did he come from? Where did this guy come from?” So I think they’re just very proud. I know they’re very proud. I’m really happy to have -- I feel like it’s good. It’s sort of my way of saying thank you for all the stuff I put them through as it related to literature. But they never, they never stopped. They never stopped, I mean, “We don’t care. If you don’t want to read, too bad you’re going to do it.” That thing never stopped. And so yes, he’s right, we did do it. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Do you think work, know when something’s going to end up being a picture book or a novel or a collection of poems? Is that conscious? Does it happen organically? KA: Yes. It’s a good question. I have not always, I haven’t been -- Quite a few of my writer friends are very sort of, and I say this in the most respectful way, in the clouds. They’re inspired, and the muse comes, and that’s all good. And to a certain degree, yes, I have muses. But I am also very methodical about my approach to writing books. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write a play tonight. That’s always been my mindset. I’m going to sit down, I’m going to write a picture book. This morning I was working on a picture book, looking out on this beautiful water and listening to the trains, and I’m going to write a picture book. So it’s very, it’s very planned. I mean, it’s very intentional. I know what genre it’s going to be. I’ve thought about it over and over in my head because there are -- before I can actually sit down to write, I have to know what genre. There’s not going to be any I don’t know, maybe this is something else. No, it is what it’s going to be. I have to know the title. I have to know that from the beginning. And I have to know the whole -- and I have to know the entire story. I have to know the beginning and the end. I don’t have to know the middle. But I have to know those three things. And so it becomes very -- it becomes less, let the muse sort of inspire me, let me find out what this is, and more of, alright, muse, you ready to do this? Let’s make it happen. This is what’s about to go down. NJ: Do you think the muse is percolating even though you’re not aware of it? KA: Yes. NJ: So by the time -KA: Yes, the muse is definitely -- yes. By the time I actually write, I’ve already started writing, and the muse has been working with me and inspiring me. So all that happens up there while I’m presenting, while I’m traveling around, walking my daughter to school, the muse is working. When I sit down to write, I’m taking all of that that I’ve gathered and culled together over the weeks, months, or years. It’s interesting because when I present to students or when I’m giving a keynote, it’s weird because two things are happening up there. Number one, I am present in the moment, which is why I try to make sure that I connect with students and get names. And it’s not just so that the students can feel connected. It’s so I can feel connected too. Because there’s another thing going on. I’m also actively at this simultaneously, I’m involved in this whole other process, and that process is -- I’m not even sure if this is something I should say. That’s the thing about this, in this age of Twitter, stuff ends up everywhere. ST: Nancy and I do not know how to Twitter. NJ: We don’t tweet. We do not tweet, so. KA: I’m being facetious. I’m being facetious. ST: I’m not. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: My mind, my mind is in the moment and I’m trying to connect with you, but I’m also thinking about what I’m going to be doing over here. And over here could be, I heard four kids up there laughing and being rambunctious. Okay, at some point during this presentation, Kwame, you need to make your way up there, and you need to do that poem that’s on page 46 in Crush, because that poem is going to resonate with that boy, because you saw the way... So I’m having this whole other conversation as I’m connecting with this student over here. And I don’t know if that’s multitasking or literary schizophrenia, or whatever it is, but I have stopped trying to understand it and just do it. I don’t know, I don’t know how it happens, but I just do it. NJ: I think I mentioned to you at Singapore American School that that’s what I hope I get better at as a teacher. I mean, watching you yesterday, watching you at the Singapore American School, you are so present for the learners, the kids, whoever’s there, even the grownups, that we’re sure you’re -- It’s like when I go to a really good church service, it’s like, Oh, that sermon was for me. KA: Right. NJ: And that’s what I hope I can learn to do as a teacher so that when I leave they go, Oh yes, that lesson was for me. I needed that one. And you don’t even seem to think about it. I think it’s kind of who you are. KA: Yes. NJ: You’re saying, No, I’m not a teacher. You are a teacher at the core. KA: Well, yes, thank you. I tried teaching, I tried teaching. NJ: Well you’re still doing it. You just don’t do it with a certificate. KA: Yes, right. NJ: You don’t have a teaching certificate. You’re still teaching. KA: Right, right. NJ: I saw you with your daughter. KA: Right. NJ: I mean, you’re still teaching. KA: Yes. NJ: And in ways that sometimes we can’t get away with in a classroom. Cool, we’re lucky to have that happen. KA: Right. I remember Scott Riley, one of the teachers in Singapore. At the Singapore American School, he told me, it was like, “The kids are the curriculum.” And so, if you’re teaching the curriculum, you got Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections to teach to the kids. And we forget that sometimes. And I think that one of the beauties of presenting with students, like the 5th graders at Western Washington, is that you get to -- it’s sort of like jazz. When you have a jam session, you have to be present in order to riff off of your bandmates. In order to follow along, in order to get in the groove, and you don’t know the kind of magic that’s going to come out of that, but you got to be willing to do that and discover it. And I think each time I go into a class or into an auditorium or what have you, I want -- it’s a jam session for me. We’re all involved, and I may have some ideas about what I’m going to do, and I’m also open to wherever this is going to take us, because there may be some teachable moments here. There may be some things that I’ll discover about myself. There may be some things that some student will discover about her or himself. And I think that’s really magical. But you got to be willing to have five people in the theater to do that, and that is not easy. ST: Thanks. KA: Thank you. NJ: You got two people in the theater. NJ: It’s easier. -KA: Yes. It’s good to be able to talk about it. A lot of this stuff I haven’t shared in a while, just remember. It’s good to remember that. ST: Yes. KA: Yes. ST: We have a few more months until the next announcement in January. I hope it carries, I hope it flows over. You’ve talked about this year as this platform that you’re honored to be on and to reach out, and I don’t see it ending, to be perfectly honest. NJ: I think you’re booked for the next two years anyway, right? KA: Yes. NJ: I think you’ve found the theater. I mean, it is really not gone. KA: Right. I think I was able to sort of merit all those things, right? NJ: This is your theater. That one was temporary. It was a placeholder. KA: Right. NJ: It’s a placeholder theater. KA: Yes. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Right? I mean, this gig is not Broadway, but for you, you’re on a different Broadway. ST: Well it’s the trifecta that you were talking about of who you are, what you’re writing about, and the connection with the audience, that initial rush that you had from that first place. NJ: Yes. KA: Right. NJ: Sharing your words with the world. ST: And then here you are now -KA: Oh, you’re right. ST: -- in that same experience. It’s like it’s that whole spiral, cyclical thing going. And it’s like, wow, that does make a lot of sense. KA: You’re right. That’s exactly what it is. NJ: And so it’s no wonder it’s like it feels like you’ve come home when you do that. It feels right because it is right for you. KA: Right, right. NJ: Not for all of us -KA: Right. NJ: -- but it’s right for you. KA: Yes, yes. NJ: And that’s why the other people who have a muse that is different, that’s right for them. KA: Right, exactly, exactly. NJ: And that’s right for them. This is you, and to try to find that, we don’t always find it at 18 or 19. We’re looking. KA: Right. NJ: We’re meddling. KA: Right, right. NJ: Right? Yes. So you kind of hope that there is that place. And it’s just lovely when you know. I mean when you know it, it’s like, I am so lucky. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KA: Right, exactly. I was telling Sylvia, I wake up every morning, I just laugh. It’s like, “No way, really?” NJ: Really, seriously, right? Hey, Dad, I am going to talk to you for an hour because really? KA: Right. ST: Well, that’s a good place to end. NJ: But you wouldn’t have known that when you had five people in your audience. ST: But you knew it when you had that previous feeling. It was the feeling to repeat. NJ: Yes, yes. Thank you. Kwame Alexander Edited Transcript – October 21, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Melissa Sweet interview
Date: 2016-02-25
Description: Melissa Sweet is an awarding illustrator of children's literature.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: SweetMelissa_20160225
Text preview (might not show all results): with the front matter a little bit to make it a lead into the story. And there had to be -- so in this case -- That’s a great question actually. In this case, we had Jane and Heidi’s text, but we had
Show more with the front matter a little bit to make it a lead into the story. And there had to be -- so in this case -- That’s a great question actually. In this case, we had Jane and Heidi’s text, but we had to give them, these birds, a life. What does it mean that pigeons nest on concrete ledges, catbirds nest in green hedges? Did they need to relate at all? Not really, but they’re going to be opposite each other, so
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Title: Liz Van Doren interview
Date: 2016-01-15
Description: Liz Van Doren is the Editorial Director at Boyds Mill Press and Highlights for Children. Kerry McManus is the Marketing and Permissions Manager at Boyds Mills Press and Highlights for Children. Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, is the only children's imprint in the United States specifically dedicated to poetry.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: VanDoren20160115
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Liz Van Doren ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria o
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Liz Van Doren ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Liz Van Doren and Kerry McManus on January 8, 2016, at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Boston Massachusetts. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: We are here at ALA Midwinter in Boston. And, we’re having the wonderful opportunity to speak with Liz Van Doren, who is the Editorial Director of Boyds Mills Press. KM: And Kerry McManus, marketing manager. NJ: And what we will do is try to disappear, because more than anything, we would just love for you to talk. Mostly, because this is for our PoetryCHaT, poetry collection, about Wordsong. Don’t worry about it being a natural flow. Whatever comes to mind from when you started working with Bea would be awesome, any of that connection. LVD: So I wish that had been the case. Wordsong was started at the beginning of Boyds Mills Press, which is 23 years ago. The story, it’s a great story, and we can provide you with this interview. There’s an interview with Bea in -KM: -- NCTE journal. LVD: -- an NCTE journal. She was originally invited. She was connected to Highlights for years, and she was invited by our editor in chief to come and speak to the board about what makes a great story. She was also a longtime friend of Kent Brown, who was the founder of Boyds Mills Press. He is the grandson of the founders of Highlights. And he wanted -- Kent is kind of a visionary, and he saw things that maybe other people don’t see, and he was perhaps less concerned with commerce and more concerned with bringing great books to kids no matter what it takes. So he wanted to start a poetry imprint, and he invited Bea to come and do it. Nobody who is on the staff now, unfortunately, worked with her because her association with Wordsong -- I’m not going to say it ended, but it kind of, you know, slowly slipped away over the last 10 years. I’ve been here for 5 years, and I don’t -Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections KM: Yes, I agree. It’s probably been closer to maybe 7 or 8 years that she hasn’t been affiliated with, strongly affiliated with Wordsong. LVD: And as she kind of slipped out of that role and did other things, we hired first as a freelancer and then as a full-time staff person Rebecca Davis, who had worked at Simon & Schuster, she worked at Greenwillow, she worked at Orchard. She has a deep passion for poetry. It really takes a special kind of editor to edit poetry. It’s very, -- it’s complicated, and yet it’s just the same as editing anything because a poem is a story. But poetry also has form, and you need to understand the form, and you need to understand when the form works and when the form doesn’t. So Rebecca pretty exclusively publishes all of the poetry for Wordsong now. We think a lot about, National Poetry Month is in April, and we kind of look at how many books a year are we going to publish, and how are we going to manage those? We do publish poetry books in the fall occasionally, a few. We try to publish them mostly in the spring so that we can take advantage of any poetry month promotions. But we also try to keep the list small so that we’re not cannibalizing our young, so that every book has an opportunity to -KM: And there are some years that we don’t publish any Wordsong titles. LVD: Right. NJ: So you don’t make a commitment to say, We will publish two Wordsongs a year? KM: No, it’s really list driven, I would say, author driven, editor driven. LVD: So one of the things as I was doing some research because I have to confess that I had to go to our editor in chief and say, I should know how Wordsong was founded but I don’t know that much about it. And she said, I don’t know that much about it either (laughter), which made me feel so much better, because a 23-year-old history is 23-year-old history. But Wordsong is the Japanese word for poem, and that was Bea’s idea to name this imprint after something really sort of deep and ethereal and heartfelt. I know, very cool. And so, one of the things you asked in the email is what drives our acquisitions? You can imagine that Rebecca gets a lot of submissions every year, and some of them are great, and some of them are okay, and some of them are not great. And so, it’s always a little bit mysterious and yet completely obvious what’s great. One of the things that’s sort of the hallmark, one of the things that we look for, is books that are unexpected. If it’s been published before, we - you know, there’s no point in our doing it. NJ: I’m chuckling because it makes such good sense. LVD: Yes, unexpected is a really important word. If something is expected, that’s not a good thing, in a landscape where books are very expensive to make and very expensive to market and very expensive to buy. We look for books that are kind of inspiring to young readers, that challenge readers to think about themselves, to think about the world, to think about their assumptions, to think about what is inside them emotionally. I think that poetry publishing is a very underserved genre. I just love that there is a Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections day called Keep a Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I love that schools do that, and I think that poetry, even for the most reluctant reader, poetry is something -- a poem is something that they can be successful with. And a poem tells a story in very few words. But we really think about, you know, we look for excellent writing, we look for a deep understanding of form. A rhyming picture book is not a poetry picture book, and so that’s always - something that is talked about a lot in our editorial meetings, is, you know, someone will invariably say, Well, it rhymes. Shouldn’t it be a Wordsong book? And Rebecca has a bruise on her forehead from banging it on the table because no, poetry is something bigger than just rhyme. ST: And that’s something that we addressed and confronted ourselves as we were developing the collection, what we’re going to bring into poetry collection from the picture books. And coming to that same, really coming to that same decision that rhyming picture books are not part of what we are going to define as the poetry collection. LVD: Right. And a book could be -- the entire book could be a poem. You can take a poem and illustrate it, and then that’s a poetry picture book. ST: Right, absolutely. LVD: A book can be a collection of poems and be a picture book, and as I talked about earlier, have a story woven through, something that knits all of the poems together. NJ: Your example today, The Farmers Market KM: Right. LVD: Yes, the Fresh Delicious, by Irene Latham. A book, you know, poetry extends into older age groups, and I’ve just been so excited to see acknowledgment in the literary world of novels in verse with our own Words with Wings, with Sharon Creech’s books, with Karen Hess’s book, -KM: Kwame Alexander. LVD: Yes. So, I think those are -- And Rebecca can definitely speak to you more about what, but one of the things we always talk about, Is it unexpected? Has it been done before? How will it be illustrated? With a picture book, that’s really important. We have rejected manuscripts that we could not figure out how to illustrate. There’s a great book that we’re publishing next year called Thunder Underground, which is a collection of poems by Jane Yolen about what happens below the earth. But it’s not just about ants and moles and rabbits. It’s also about sewers and earthquakes and volcanos and what’s under the ocean floor. But it was a crazy challenge to illustrate that book and to figure out, to find an illustrator who wanted to take it on, and kind of figure out how not to be literal with the illustration. KM: And to that note, we have really renown poets that we publish some works on like Jane Yolen and Nikki and Lee Bennett Hopkins. We have a collection of his, Jumping Off Library Shelves, which has all of Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections the different renown poets in that book. So it’s curated by Lee, and then we have Nikki and Jane in that book as well, and then we have new poets. That you could probably speak to, Liz. LVD: Right. So I brought a list because we had a -NJ: We’re curious who you got to illustrate that one. KM: Jane Manning was Jumping Off Library Shelves. NJ: But who is doing Thunder Underground KM: I don’t know. I can’t remember. LVD: I’m going to look because I think I have it here. I can tell you -NJ: You said it was a real challenge, and so I’m curious how you worked through that. LVD: It was a real challenge. NJ: Because of illustrators of poetry collections, that’s something that Sylvia and I have been talking about. LVD: Josée Masse. She’s a -- J-O-S-É-E, with an accent on the first E, M-A-S-S-E. So glad I brought my publish list. Be prepared! So, you know, here’s a list of some of the people we’ve published: Jane Yolen, Rebecca Dotlich, Laura Purdie Salas, J. Patrick Lewis, Amy VanDerwater, David Harrison, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Marilyn Singer, Georgia Heard, Nikki Grimes, Janice Harrington, Irene Latham. And we had a dinner at NCTE last year. It began with Janet Wong saying, I got a few people, let’s have a dinner. And then we were like, Let’s we’ll have the dinner, and we’ll invite eight people, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my career. We had 30 -KM: Yes, 30 -LVD: -- 35 or 38 -KM: It was like Wordsong throughout the years. All of these backlist authors, and front list authors, all in one room. LVD: Everybody who is writing poetry for kids was there. KM: Yes. LVD: I was like, Oh my god, it’s like the Academy Awards. KM: Yes, it was an amazing gathering of people. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: So we really do -- we publish just about everybody who’s writing poetry. We also happen to be the only publisher with an imprint devoted to poetry. But you know, the goal is not volume. The goal is quality. The goal is refinement. The goal is to celebrate poetry. KM: To do the best. LVD: And publishing poetry is hard. Poetry books don’t sell the way picture books and novels do. Occasionally if they win an award, that certainly helps it. It’s interesting to me always that poetry is categorized as nonfiction by the ALA committees, which doesn’t make sense to me at all. NJ: -- Dewey Decimal System. LVD: And in the Dewey Decimal System. Like, where did that come from? Why is that? Isn’t that -doesn’t it always seem odd to you? ST: And we always joke about it. LVD: Everybody always jokes about it. KM: -- and we always forget about it, and then we’re like oh, it’s nonfiction, so we have to recalibrate our thinking sometimes. LVD: I think everybody has to recalibrate their thinking. ST: Well there’s a sense of the history of poetry as expository, as something that was actually historically something, that wasn’t necessarily -- it’s interesting how it ended up in Dewey as nonfiction. It’s interesting too when -- I was preparing for this myself and inventorying our own holdings of Wordsong. I was surprised that there were not fewer titles because we plan on having every single Wordsong book in our collection because we have to have that. KM: Yay. ST: And I was struck by the same thing, but hearing you talk right now about the importance of selection and the intentionality about what you publish, it makes perfect sense. LVD: Well, and the reality that any publisher will talk about is we’re not a nonprofit organization. You know, we have to think about sales as we -- So we do think about Fresh Delicious, for example, that manuscript really, as I said earlier, it sparkled. And there’s a lot of books about farmers’ markets, but there’s no poetry book about a farmers’ market. But there have been other poetry collections that have been submitted to us that just didn’t jump off the page. There was just something about those poems that make you want to eat the fruits and vegetables, want to hold them and look at them, because it’s about color and it’s about taste and it’s about shape and texture. NJ: Texture KM: Yes, sensory. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: I would like to ask you a question about, and this goes back again to Bea, but the NCTE poetry award and the books that they used to have for poets who won the award that Boyds Mills did, that Bea was a part of, what’s Wordsong or Boyds Mills’ connection to that award, if any? Do you know? KM: I don’t know. And yes, I’d have to look through -- we have an archivist actually at Highlights, so that’s a great -NJ: We could send that question. LVD: I think it was -- here’s what I think about it. The book was called A Jar of Tiny Stars, KM: Right. LVD: -- and then there was a second called Another Jar of Tiny Stars, and I just had this perplexing conversation with our sales people because we put A Jar of Tiny Stars out of print, and they were like, Well why would you do that? It sold a lot of copies. And I said, because Another Jar of Tiny Stars is the same book with more in it.” NJ: It’s different poets. The first ten and then the next ten. LVD: Right. It was a hard decision. They were, again, I think that was Bea’s labor of love. NJ: Yes, I think you’re right. LVD: Because we don’t -- there was no connection between Boyds Mills and the award. It was her connection with Boyds Mills and the award. NJ: That helps me. LVD: Yes. NJ: How do you choose an illustrator for a poetry collection? LVD: It’s interesting. It’s pretty much the same process as choosing an illustrator for a picture book manuscript. You know, we think about what -- the first thing an editor thinks about is, What kind of art style do I think would work? Do I want quirky? Do I want humorous? Do I want watercolor? Do I want graphic? Do I want contemporary? Do I want classic? Do I want timeless? And once you kind of shake that through the funnel and kind of come out with the style that you’re looking for, then you start looking at illustrator websites, agent websites. This conference and any conference is an awesome opportunity for us to walk around and look at what other people are publishing. Because, to be very frank, because the sales of poetry are slower and smaller than the sales of picture books, we also really like to discover people early in their career, partly because they’re willing to maybe accept a lower advance than they would for a picture book. But also because it’s a different kind of illustrating, but the thing we’re always asking them is, You have to tell a visual story. You have to find the visual thread that pulls you through. Not every illustrator can think that way, but when they can it’s great. So it’s not any different a process than matching a picture book manuscript to an illustrator. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections You should ask Rebecca that question too, though. She may say something different. NJ: Does she, which is an interesting question I have, does she make all of the decisions for poetry about which books, all these that you’re going to do or which one a year, and does she make the decision about the artist. LVD: She makes the recommendation. KM: Yes, it’s very collaborative. We have an editorial meeting every month. NJ: Okay. KM: All of us are included in that, and we all give our opinions, good or bad, but then generally it moves from there over to a smaller, more succinct group of people, Liz, and a smaller group that makes the final decisions. LVD: The final decisions are made by me and our publisher with feedback from marketing and feedback from sales. But Rebecca makes all the recommendations, and it’s usually pretty clear. You know, she’s a smart cookie. It’s not that often that we say no, because she has already gone through her own process of vetting. ST: And that encompasses type, font, and those kinds of decisions as well -- because that’s also so important for a poetry book, how the word -KM: Mm-hmm, how it’s laid out -ST: -- the layout of the actual -LVD: Those are all decisions that are made between Rebecca, who’s the editor, and the designer. NJ: Designer, okay. LVD: But again, because publishing takes a village, the creative director and I certainly weigh in. With every book, once the illustrator’s chosen, then we either create galleries for the illustrator to do their sketches with, or they do their sketches, and then we start the type design. The designer and the editor will work closely together, and then they’ll present what’s called the dummy, the pages to me and the creative director, and we’ll -- Our creative director has a really good eye, and she’ll say, I think that font is going to overwhelm the artwork, or it’s too thin and you can’t read it. So there’s -- publishing any book is, I would like to say in any house, I can’t speak per many other houses, but at least at our place and most of the places I’ve worked, a very collaborative process that involves editorial, marketing, sales, design, and production. KM: Right. NJ: All those names don’t go on the book. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: None of the names -- you know, the only names that go on the book -- this is so funny -- the only names that go on the book are the designer and the production manager. KM: Yes, I know, that is kind of funny. LVD: In magazines, every name goes in it. KM: Right, marketed by... NJ: I want to go back to something you may have answered, but I might not have heard it clearly. So this coming year, you have two novels in verse. KM: Mm-hmm. NJ: Are they Wordsong, or how do you decide? LVD: They’re Wordsong. NJ: As long as it’s any kind of poetry, no matter the form, format, it would be Wordsong? LVD: Yes. KM: Correct, yes. NJ: Okay. I just wanted to be clear on that one. ST: And how do you juggle all these different parts that you have in terms of the differences. KM: Well we write marketing plans every list. Every season and every list, we prioritize our lists. And sometimes it’s a tough process. We have to -- we get a lot of feedback from editorial. We work very closely with Liz, and we identify our lead titles, and then we really put our muscle behind select books. We love them all, but the beauty of Boyds Mills Press is that it’s a small list, so we can work with every author, every illustrator, every title -ST: You can adjust if a book emerges in the list KM: And we can adjust. But I will tell you, like Nikki’s Garvey’s Choice is a lead title for us of course, so we will be putting a lot of marketing muscle behind it. NJ: And that is when? KM: That is fall. LVD: Fall of ’16. KM: Fall of ’16. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: So we will have ARCs for that book at ALA annual. We will have a big marketing -- it also depends on the author’s availability -- Nikki’s very excited about this one. KM: -- it’s a collaborative, and then another collaborative process over here. That kind of swirls around, and we work very closely with authors and illustrators, especially now with -- We were just talking about this today at the lunch, you know with the advent of Twitter and Facebook, a lot of it is author driven, and it has to be, but we can support them and help them find other avenues to market themselves, but a lot of it is heavily author driven. NJ: It is so different. KM: Yes. NJ: It adds another layer to an author’s life. KM: It does. It’s a good thing though. Ultimately it’s a good thing, but it takes a lot of time. ST: Well it makes a personal connection -- between the book and author, but as you said, it takes a lot of time -KM: Yes, it takes social media -NJ: And some authors, I’m sure, are less, not just skilled, but even willing to -KM: Exactly. NJ: -- invest that part of self. It’s because it’s an investment of yourself. KM: It is. It takes a lot of time for them. LVD: It takes a lot of time for them, but I think today more than ever, any author who expects the publisher to do all the work for them is very misguided. KM: Right. LVD: It just doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. KM: No. It’s a different era. You know, working in the ‘90s and publishing, it’s totally different. It’s really evolved in many, many ways. ST: You still have plenty to do. LVD: We have plenty to do. KM: We have a lot to do, a lot to do. It’s never ending. We could always be doing more, and that’s one of the factors with our jobs is that we have a certain layer of guilt sometimes, that we could always be Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections doing more to help an author, but we have to sometimes really pick and choose and really put time behind certain titles. NJ: How many other publishing houses have you worked with? And I’m going to say with poetry. LVD: Four. NJ: Okay. So in those houses, how is poetry here different from poetry in those houses? I mean, you have an actual imprint specific to poetry. KM: Right. LVD: Well, that’s the big difference. I think poetry in my longest gig was a little bit marginalized. It fell in the regular picture book publishing program. If it got attention, if a poetry book got attention, it got great reviews, then people would pay attention to it. But the poetry picture books were seen as picture books first and poetry second, and I think we look at it the other way, right? KM: Yes, I agree, I agree. And that’s my experience too, from working at Random House in the ‘90s, it was always picture book first. If it was poetry, that was always second. LVD: Even though you would say, It’s a poetry picture book, what people heard was picture book. KM: Right. NJ: And you, I’m imagining, feel free to correct me, the reason no one else has an imprint, one of the big reasons, is sales. LVD: Absolutely. ST: So what do you attribute the current upsurge, as modest as it might be, within publishing that’s happening currently with narrative verse in particular, but poetry also? Or maybe not, you don’t see it as much in picture book poetry, but certainly in narrative verse it’s there. KM: I think it’s reactionary to other trends in publishing, you know, the whole dystopian novels maybe. It’s a kinder, gentler reading for a student, or a person in general. LVD: You know, and I have to say, librarians and reviewers are deeply important to our business, and when a book like Out of the Dust wins the Newbery, or Newberry Honor, I can’t remember which one -NJ: The Newbery LVD: -- the Newbery, it gives us hope that when we publish a novel in verse that it will be paid attention to. So as Kerry said, it is reactionary. I was at NCTE last year. We were right across the booth from another publisher, and I was so excited to see one of our authors, Laura Purdie Salas, sitting there with a signing line that went on and on and on and on, and she’s very early in her career. And I think I should mention teachers too. I think that poetry is a really integral part of elementary, you know, ELA Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections classrooms, and I think that it’s a great way to teach writing. It’s a great way to teach reading. It’s a great way to talk about creativity. There’s a lot of now national programs. I cannot underestimate the importance of things like the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, where young poets can be honored nationally by the submission of poetry that is judged by grownups, by real live, awesome, adult, wellknown poets. And I think that, I don’t know, I’m very happy to see it, but it is reactionary, and I think it’s just something changes and then people notice, and then it changes a little bit more, and it changes a little bit more, and suddenly it’s just part of the conversation. KM: Yes. ST: Well, I know in speaking with Sylvia Vardell, her comments about The Poetry Friday Anthologies that she and Janet Wong are publishing and how they’ve gone through to middle school, and that’s sort of their cut off. They are not doing those for high school, because it really is at K-8 grades where they’re finding this rich response to those collections of verse. And I’m just curious myself eventually to see what’s happening with YA literature and poetry. It’s curious -KM: Right. And we have ambassadors, like the children’s poet laureates -KM: -- J. Patrick Lewis. That didn’t exist. NJ: -- and Jackie Woodson is now in that role. KM: That didn’t exist. So that’s a fairly new phenomenon that really keeps poetry in the forefront. NJ: That’s right. That’s a good point. We need to think about how we weave them into the conversation. That award and people who created that award. LVD: Well the National Poetry Foundation is a really, really powerfully active organization, and I think that they have certainly helped. Because they support that post, and so I think it would be very interesting to talk to their director as well as to Pat Lewis or, I forgot who followed him. I think that -NJ: Kenn Nesbitt. And he’s in Spokane in our area. And, the role of people like Janet Wong and Sylvia Vardell, and they’re so present out in the social networking of poetry, that’s cool. I mean, they do such cool stuff for teachers. And I imagine that that has, I would hope, had an impact even on poetry sales? KM: It’s huge for us. Sylvia every year comes to us and says, What do you have that’s new? NJ: Every new book – it will be posted on her blog. KM: And she will support us. She supports us. LVD: And she supports our authors. KM: She does. She really tries to get a Wordsong author on her poetry panel every year at TLA. So she always lets us know, always asks us. If we have somebody, she accepts them, and it’s a great promotion for us. So she and Janet are support. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections LVD: It’s great support for us because we do need that support, you know. We can’t just do it ourselves The poets do. KM: Right. LVD: I also think something else that I’m noticing as the parent of a middle schooler, and Kerry, you might be noticing this too. Poetry has gotten kind of cool. Like that whole kind of downtown art beat spoken word. Like spoken word is now part of the conversation among teenagers, and it’s kind of this sort of retro, this thing that has come around again. KM: I agree. Even with social media that they use, you know, the Snapchats and Instagram posts, just a little quick poem accompanied by a photograph is -- I see that a lot when I check their social media LVD: Exactly, when we monitor their social media. KM: It’s cooler. Even the stores they like to shop, and, you know, the little journals that have little poems added. They love that. They love it. So it’s coming around again to that age. NJ: There’s so much about poetry that’s about identity and voice. LVD: Yes. NJ: But I think of Kwame’s making it cool. In fact, he’s a huge influence on the role of poetry, spoken poetry, but linking it with basketball. You and I know poetry’s about something, but a lot of people don’t know that. LVD: Well, they’re threatened by it. They think, I’m not gonna understand it. ST: Well, there’s the right answer that you have to answer about poetry, which is unfortunate. LVD: You know, something else I didn’t say earlier that sort of belongs in the how do you make a decision about what to publish. I talked a lot about picture books and a rhyming picture book, and this is a trend we’re seeing that I’m about to address. A rhyming picture book isn’t necessarily a work of poetry. A novel that has line breaks in the middle of a sentence is not necessarily a novel in verse, and we get a lot of submissions that are just phrases kind of lined up to look poetic, and Rebecca will be the first one to say, It’s not poetry. It’s just broken sentences. KM: Right, right. LVD: So that’s also interesting that we’re getting a lot of those submissions. NJ: It helps us understand what it is, then. What is the difference? KM: Mm-hmm. LVD: Yes. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Because that’s part her expertise. LVD: She speaks about it way better than I can. ST: It’s part of the craft. NJ: How long has she been with Boyds Mills? LVD: She started out as a -- it’s been about five years. She’s been our full-time employee for three, I think. NJ: Did she always do poetry in her other houses? LVD: No, she did picture books and novels as well. But when she was hired to work as a freelance editor, she was hired because she is an editor who deeply understands and is very passionate about poetry. But she also publishes picture books and fiction as well. For example, if another editor wanted to publish a Wordsong book, they could, but Rebecca would be involved because she has so many smarts and so much to say and so much experience. NJ: She’s got a lot of knowledge. LVD: Exactly. ST: I don’t know if we have anything else. This has been a wonderful start. And gosh, and again, just to reiterate the centrality of Wordsong as an imprint. LVD: Well thank you so much. ST: I anticipate it might be that we come back again and have another conversation. KM: Yes. LVD: Absolutely. We’ll talk on the phone. LVD: We’re on the phone all day long, so -KM: You can dial in to our 800 hundred number. ST: And we are so grateful. KM: And like I said, we have a lot of archival information about Wordsong that we can pass -LVD: Yes, that interview with Bea is great. KM: I will make sure I’ll put together a whole packet for you on a .pdf, whatever you’d like. NJ: Really valuable. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: That would be extremely valuable. The vision for the collection really is very broad at this point. We would like to interview illustrators, the publishers, the editors. We would like to interview the publishers and the editors and all the different components that belong, LVD: Yes, it would be really interesting to talk to the illustrators. KM: Especially the ones that had a relationship with Bea. LVD: But like, someone like Matt Cordell, for example, he illustrates picture books. He also did a book of poetry for us. KM: Right. LVD: So, it might be interesting to talk to someone like him about what’s the difference. ST: I’m going to turn off the recorder at this point. End of recording. Liz Van Doren – January 15, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Sylvia Vardell interview
Date: 2016-01-08
Description: Sylvia Vardell is a Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman's University. Her work focuses on poetry for chldren, including a regular blog, PoetryforChildren. She is the regular "Everyday Poetry" columnist for ALA's BookLinks magazine and the 2014 recipient of the ALA Scholastic Library Publishing Award.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: VardellSylvia_20160108
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Sylvia Vardell ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHaT Sylvia Vardell ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Sylvia Vardell on January 8, 2016, at the American Library Association Midwinter conference in Boston Massachusetts. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: We are here in Boston, Massachusetts and Midwinter ALA with Sylvia Vardell, professor at Texas Women’s University and we are going to spend some time finding out about your poetry experience. SV: I’m thrilled. Do you need to check the recording, or you’ve done this and you know that it reaches. NJ: It’s one of those fancy pants ones. SV: Super duper, alright. ST: This is not the old fashioned kind. SV: I know, I’m such an amateur -NJ: Could you speak a little louder? SV: A cassette tape. NJ: We’re going to mostly let you talk, and we might occasionally have a question or two. SV: Okay, start from the beginning. Alright. Well, my professor work with poetry is in the last 15 years or so, but in doing this, it got me thinking, where are these roots from? Where did this come from? And it just surprised me that poetry was there in my childhood in a way that I hadn’t really articulated until I was way old. And I grew up as an ESL kid. My first language was German. My parents were German, and I learned English from neighbor kids. And, yes, so poetry was a way for me to get a handle on English, you know, the rhythm and the rhyme Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections and the way words are supposed to be pronounced. And I never really put that into words until way, way, way later. It was very powerful for me. And when I was about 8 -- the first books that I had were in German, little children’s books in German, and there was a book that had all kinds of prose and poetry pieces. And there was a little poem in there that I made myself memorize and perform for my mom for her birthday that I still know, and it’s not a great poem by anybody famous -ST: Well let’s hear it. German poem from childhood Wenn Vater oder Mutter Geburtstag haben Was soll ich Dir sagen? Was soll lich Dir geben? Ich hab nur ein kleines ein junges Leben. Ich hab ein Herz dass denkt und spricht Ich hab dich lieb Mehr weiss Ich nicht! (Original source unknown) NJ: Could you translate? SV: It’s something like when Mom or Dad have a birthday, what should I say? What should I give? I only have a small mind, a small heart, but I love you dearly, and that’s all I have to give. Something like that. I know, it sounds really schmaltzy and corny in English, but in German it’s just sort of rollicking, rhythmic rhyme, just silly kind of thing. But anyway, I did that on my own initiative because that was the book I had, and I wanted to do something for my mom, and what did I choose? A poem. And I just love that. And I love that it’s still with me. That’s sort of the power of poetry too. It sticks in your brain forever. But then years go by, and I’m an avid reader. I read lots of things. I don’t actually read that much poetry as a kid, after that, when I move into English, I really don’t. You know, you have to in school, memorize “The Village Blacksmith” in 6th grade for Mrs. Brooks. Under the spreading chestnut-tree the village smithy stands.” And that was a hideous experience, because I didn’t know what I was saying, you know, you’re 12 years old. What’s a village blacksmith? I’m a little German girl. I’ve never seen a blacksmith. So, and then the whole agony of getting up in front of your classmates to say a poem was a big negative for me. Even though I’m a really good memorizer, that public performance thing, that was not comfortable. I was a very shy kid, if you can believe it, very shy. And so, that was, “Oh, poetry is not for me.” And then in high school and college, you’re memorizing, not memorizing, you’re analyzing poetry, and I was actually very good at that. One of my favorite stories is an English class at UT Austin where we had to describe our analysis of a poem, and I hadn’t Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections even read it, I just made shit up, and then the professor reads my response out loud to the class as a model example. So what that taught me was, it’s just all bullshit, you know. So you’re going to have to censor that. NJ: Or not. ST: Not at all, that’s -- a real response. SV: Poetry is what it means, you know, whatever you think it means. And I was lucky enough not to have too many teachers who said, “You have to get what I got out of it.” It was the ‘70s and we were all hippies, and they said, “Whatever you think, that’s valid and legitimate.” Which, I value that, but on the other hand, I didn’t have any guidance in really understanding or thinking deep or looking at the context in which the poem was written, anything. So that -- in my childhood I loved it, then I didn’t read it, then I just made stuff up, and then -- actually at the University of Minnesota in my doctoral program, I was studying children’s literature in depth, just loved it. That’s really where things just caught fire for me professionally. And I worked with Norine Odland who’s no longer with us. She was a giant in the field, and a cranky, cranky lady, but she was so smart, and she mentored me. She thought she saw something. And that was such a great experience. It just totally turned my life down the children’s literature path. But I also met a fellow doctoral student named Mary Kay Rummel, and I don’t even know what she’s doing now. NJ: Oh-SV: Do you know Mary Kay Rummel”? Is she somebody? See, I’ve not kept up with her in 30 years. NJ: I haven’t heard the name in a long time. SV: She was a Ph.D. student ahead of me, almost finished, and I just knew her a teeny bit, but she was a poet. She wrote poetry and performed it and published it, in just small presses, and I was like, “Oh!” It just like opened the door again. And I just really sort of dived in and started reading all the poetry I could find, especially for young people. She was really writing for an adult audience, and I didn’t pursue that, oddly enough. But it made me think about poetry again, and this is why I’m, oh my gosh, I’m going to be so old. This is when Shel Silverstein was new. Where the Sidewalk Ends was like brand, right -NJ: First editions. SV: -- brand new hot, and I’m teaching 6th graders. Where the Sidewalk Ends was written for my class. Oh my gosh, they loved it. And I always said, if I was stranded on a desert island with 6th graders, that would be the one book I would like to have, because you could just read it over and over and over again, and just laugh and laugh and laugh, and they were so, you know -- there’s sort of an angry subtext in some of those poems. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Of course SV: Right, right. Which 6th graders totally get. So that was it, that was it for me. I thought, oh my gosh, I just love this. I did not think that poetry could be anything but the “The Village Blacksmith” or silly childhood rhymes, which I also value classics and silliness, but I’m now I’m seeing, oh, you can write with a child audience in mind, or you can write for adults but then kids see something in it too. It just, Woo! Very exciting. So then I started reading more poetry for kids, and various poets come to the University of Minnesota because they host authors, and that was awesome, meeting an author. Wow! I did not grow up with that as a kid. I don’t know if you guys did. But wow! ST: No, it wasn’t a time -- this is a new time when authors started to travel and actually present about their creative process. That wasn’t an experience for my childhood. SV: Right, right. Or maybe adult authors did it for adult audiences. I don’t know. I just never -- did not know. I was very like lower-middle class, you know. So that was so exciting to hear Tomie DePaola talk about work and sit at a table with him because the doctoral students are -- oh my gosh! Yes, and a special time, and it was great. It was great. So then I started -- you know, I got my first professor job and started working in children’s literature. NJ: Where was that? SV: That was at a small college. The University of Houston had a branch in Victoria, TX, way down on the Gulf Coast. At the time, it was just juniors and seniors and master students. I don’t know if it’s expanded since then. They had a visiting position open, and I had just finished my exams actually. I hadn’t written a dissertation. And my husband was ready to move. He had stayed another year in Minnesota so that -- We went there for his schooling, he finished, then I started doing schooling, and I was almost finished, so he stayed another year, did another degree. He loves school. He could do degrees till the cows come home. But we were both ready to move back to Texas, which was sort of home for us, and that position was open, and I was like, oh, that would be cool. I’d never thought about being a professor, honestly. I wanted a Ph.D. because that was the most school that you could have. That was my logic. I mean, I love school. I just kept going to school and teaching kids. So I thought I would just be some curriculum person. Move from the classroom into supervision, and that was fine. But then I was flipping through The Chronicle, there was that position, I applied for it, and they hired me. Oh my gosh. I was just like, a professor, okay. I never knew a professor in my entire life. I didn’t know to aspire to even think about doing that. But oh my gosh, that first summer I taught summer classes that started at 7 in the morning, and I lived an hour away. I know! Now I’d be like, Hell no. But at the time, I was like, I will pay you if I could do this. It was amazing. It was the perfect storm of what Sylvia has to bring and what job is out there in the world. I felt like the luckiest person ever. And I still feel really lucky. Don’t you feel really lucky to do this job, to get paid to read and teach and talk about books and help children and people who work with children, love reading? Oh my gosh! If I Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections were going to invent a perfect job to do for my life, that would be it. And I’ve been doing it almost 40 years and just love it. So at the time, children’s literature was not a thing you could do exclusively, so I taught reading and language arts and methods, even curriculum and instruction. And I supervised student teachers. You do a whole lot of things, especially at a small campus, any campus. And I enjoyed all of that, but children’s literature was always my favorite thing. And little by little, I was able to specialize in that and move to a couple different universities. And each time, it was a position that was just children’s literature, until I moved to library science, which was quite a leap, in 2001, at Texas Woman’s. I’d always been in reading or in curriculum, and they had an opening in their library information studies program, where Betty Carter was retiring, and she’d mentioned it to me. She said, “You should think about it.” I was like, “Really? I don’t have an MLS. I’ve never worked in a library.” I took a library science course at the University of Minnesota, loved it, but it was at the very end of my program. If anybody had said to consider this, I would have done that in a minute. But again, you know, it’s all the things that are in the road in front of you that unless somewhere mentors you, and I never had any mentors. So, she said apply, and I was like, Okay. And I applied, and I kept saying, I don’t have an MLS, right? You know that, right? Because I didn’t want to pretend to be something I wasn’t, and I was older at this point and pretty established, and they hired me as a full professor at TWU, and I just do children’s YA poetry, multicultural, just literature courses, and oh my gosh, that is the icing on the cake. So that’s my career trajectory. But the poetry interests actually evolved too, because first I was just doing general children’s lit, and I’m studying authors because I was so taken with this power of meeting authors, did a lot with that. And then got involved in CLA, the Children’s Literature Assembly at NCTE, which really was my mentoring body. They changed my life too. I met the best people, and opportunities came my way. Do you remember Richard Van Dongen? NJ: Oh yes. SV: -- invited me to be on the Notables committee, and I was just like, Oh my gosh, this is so amazing, books come to your house? Oh, I just thought that was I’d died and gone to heaven. Was it? Yes, and that was it. Then you’re like, I need more of this. I need some more heroin. And so many good people. And then you just feel really connected with a bigger family professionally. And got really involved in CLA. And so first the opportunity was Notables, so that was sort of wide reading, and then the next opportunity was nonfiction. I did like 10 years, got to work on the Orbis Pictus and established that award. I got to come up with a name for it, and that was so fun. I still love nonfiction, but then I was also intrigued by multicultural literature, again because of my background, the different language and cultures that I grew up with. A lot of my family doesn’t even Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections speak English, so I was very aware of how important it was to expose kids to all kinds of literature. So I spent a lot of time also reading and writing about multicultural literature. And then in each of these things, poetry’s always popping up because poetry’s considered nonfiction, right, in the library world? It’s kind of weird. And then poetry kept popping up in multicultural literature because so many authors of color are poets or write poetry. I was very intrigued by that too. So little by little, I’m writing more and more about poetry, and I’m all the time reading it and including it in my teaching. And then, I think it was when I moved to TWU, yes, I think it was, that I really decided, you know, I just want to look at poetry now. Maybe it was because I finally felt comfortably settled professionally. I could focus. And I had this idea that we needed a book of professional resources, it was very practical, about the teachings of poetry and the sharing of poetry. Really not even the teaching, just the knowing of poetry for children, because there was so much out now that I felt like my students didn’t know about. They at this point knew Shel Silverstein, and then some would know Jack Prelutsky’s work, but that was it. They didn’t know the NCTE poetry award. And the more I taught the more I was like, you know, there’s an absence here. So I came up with this proposal for a very little practical book about poetry and the sharing of poetry for kids and wrote a proposal, and ALA accepted it, and that became the book, Poetry Aloud Here! And man, that was so exciting to get to write that little book and have it be a big success, and then that opened all these doors and windows for meeting poets and presenting about poetry at conferences and sharing more ideas with students. And then the blog thing happened. People started doing blogs, and I was like, “What’s that? That’s cool!” And so I wanted to do a blog. As a professor I thought that’s a good idea to model for students. What shall I do? Well there were heaps, and this is 2005, heaps of blogs now emerging on children’s lit, and I thought, Well, I don’t want to be another children’s literature blog. I’m going to do poetry. So I just started writing about the poetry that’s out there for kids, how to share it, what to link it with. Then very, sort of practical -- always very practical minded. I’m not really a scholar, really, researcher. I know, I know! But, I’m not really investigating things. I’m more -- I had a colleague once who said, You’re a translator. You’re trying to take what is known and then help people in the field use it. ST: A connector. SV: Okay. Whatever word you want to use. ST: Translator. SV: And I love that. I don’t apologize for that. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Your blog is exceptional though, in terms of the resources. It’s very evident that you work very hard on it, the extensive listings of poets as well as the topics you bring up, and it’s current all the time. You go and whatever’s emerging really -- it’s really a place. SV: Thank you very much. ST: You’re welcome. NJ: Powerful resource. SV: I’ve had a lot of fun with it. And it was an opportunity to explore blogging. And then it was an opportunity to keep up. It’s like going to Weight Watchers and you know they’re going to weigh you, and so you’ve got to keep up. So you’ve got a blog every Friday, you’re like okay, you’re looking around, what do I need to write about? I’m a little behind at the moment actually. It’s on my list of things to do. It’s a Christmas post at the moment. But I’m always looking for the moment, because I’m thinking of my audience as basically practitioners, right? So they don’t want to just analyze a poem, they want to know who’s writing, what are the new books, how do we share them, -- what unit will this go with, etc. So, I’ve had a lot of fun with it. It’s 10 years now. NJ: When you said that I couldn’t believe it. SV: Yes, this coming summer, 10 years. I’m trying to think of what to do for 10 years. But of course now there are fewer bloggers I’ve found. That’s sort of winnowing, but I still feel like that’s a worthwhile resource. And then that blogging led to more presenting at conferences and more fawning over my favorite authors. And I went to an IRA where Janet Wong was signing the very first book, Good Luck Gold, I believe, and I just loved that book. To me, it spoke to me as a little German girl, right, with two cultures, grandparents who didn’t get America. I mean, she and I had a very interesting parallel path. And I went up to her and got her to sign my book, and I said, “Oh, I just love your work.” And you know Janet, she’s like, “Oh, now we’re best friends.” And I was like, Oh. So she was so accessible and just really engaged with me, and so as a professor, if you can put a proposal together with some authors on it, you’ve got a little better chance of getting accepted. So I thought, Well, I’ll ask Janet. And she said yes to being on a proposal, and we had a really good time doing our session. I thought, Okay, I’ll work with her again, because I’ve worked -- lots of authors, and some of them are easy and they deliver, and some of them are eh-well. Good writers, all, but some people are better speakers. Some people are easier to work with than others. ST: Of course. SV: Anyway, so oh man, this is kind of a long life story. So then I get a chance to be on the NCTE poetry award committee, and I co-chaired with Peggy Oxley, and that is tremendous. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Wow! SV: That was a fun experience. And we chose Nikki Grimes as our recipient, which was awesome. I got to become friends with Nikki. And then the committee following mine had Janet on it, and Janet was a member, and I think it was Ralph Fletcher that was the chair. Oh I can’t remember who they chose now. Was it Lee? Yes, it was Lee Bennett Hopkins. So Janet, being the dynamo that she is, when it came time for the committee to put forward proposals, because every committee is supposed to get on the docket for the next convention, she’s like, Well, maybe Sylvia will help. And I’m like, Sure. So I wrote the proposal, even though I was the last year’s chair, and it of course got accepted because it was a committee sponsored proposal. And so lo and behold, here comes the, I think it was the Philadelphia convention and Lee Bennett Hopkins was going to be honored, and it’s falling to Janet and me, even though she’s just a member, not the chair, and I’m on the old committee. Anyway, and we are like a deadly combination in terms of having ideas, more ideas than sense or money. And I said, You know what, we should do like a little Festschrift for Lee, like a little dittoed book of poems in honor of his winning the award, and she said, That’s a great idea. She said, We should get it funded. And I’m like, I just thought we’d, you know, go run it off at Kinko’s. You know, my dreams are like this big, her dreams are like this big. And she’s like, I’m going to go to NCTE, and she did. They gave us a thousand dollars, and now all of a sudden it was going to be a little nicer. And so -- I know, I know. So in the space of the summer before the NCTE conference, we gather all these contact emails from poets. We write them and say, Would you write an original poem for Lee? And like 65 people say yes, and they send us poems. And Janet and I go back and forth and back and forth, getting the poems, organizing them, and then we decide, We need to publish a little book. And Steven Alcorn, who’d worked with Lee, gave us free art. And then Janet did this research on who could publish a decent quality book. It was some company in Michigan. I mean, it was just insane how this little idea became, wow, really cool. I’m very proud of that little book. And Lee just loved it. It’s a really nice actual book. ST: Was it a surprise for Lee? SV: Uh-huh. ST: Ah, you managed to keep it a -SV: I know! ST: That’s marvelous! SV: Or maybe it wasn’t and he just acted like it was, but he was thrilled, yes, it was great. NJ: Wow. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: And we learned a lot about the poets that we were working with, again, who’s easy and who’s not, who uses the f-word in a poem and what do we do with that? NJ: Who makes a deadline. SV: Who makes a deadline, who doesn’t. And we learned a lot about each other, and each other’s working style was we were just so parallel. We would like, well, Nancy can totally appreciate this too, I’m sure. You probably can too, Sylvia. You know, you have people you write and then you wait a couple of days and you get an answer, and it’s not clear and you have to follow up... Well, Janet and I were so in sync. Within minutes of each other, we were emailing back and forth. And, I don’t know, it was incredible, it still is, an incredible working relationship, where there’s no ego. Instead maybe she’ll say, That’s a stupid idea, and I’m like, You’re right, that is! NJ: But it’s an idea. SV: How about we just don’t hurt each other’s feelings. It’s really great. I don’t know how that is, but yes. So that was our first little effort together, and then she’s like, We should do something else together. And I’m like, Yes, that would be great. And one of my colleagues in Texas was telling me the following summer that Texas was about to start testing children’s knowledge of poetry. ST: Sigh. SV: I know, I know. But my thought was, You know what that means? That means that teachers are going to freak out because they don’t know how to do this. They don’t know how -NJ: The Blacksmith poem. SV: Right, right. They don’t know how to approach poetry. They don’t do anything with it. ST: Yes, the poetry that they knew, exactly, from when they were growing up instead of something that’s new and innovative. SV: This is an opportunity to create a resource for teachers that bridges that gap between -- they’re going to be tested. Teachers need to know poetry first, and then they need to know how to share it. And that’s how The Poetry Friday Anthologies were born. NJ: Wow! ST: Oh, is that right? SV: Yep. NJ: So it was because of Texas initiative. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: A very bad, yes. And yes, that’s still - I hate that for testing. NJ: Do they still do it? SV: Oh yes. They keep refunding it, yes, yes. (Sigh) So, that is sort of my career trajectory and sort of the history of Janet and me working together and the PFA series. NJ: But it’s not the only book. SV: No, no, one thing led to the next. NJ: Want to keep it going to how one book led to how do you make the decisions about, what book you’re working on, and how do you -SV: Sure. NJ: Could you talk about those choices within the publishing and creating that. SV: Okay. Yes, because that’s been very interesting too, in terms of our deciding to publish it ourselves. Yes, that was totally nuts. But how did that happen exactly? We were walking around NCTE in Orlando, and I was sharing this idea with her about how I thought there was a market for something, because my Poetry Aloud Here! book had shown me that there was an audience for teachers and librarians to know just the nuts and bolts of how to select and share poetry with kids. But I thought, teachers in Texas, for example, needed more than that. They needed like lesson plans or actual poems, you know. I know. So we were just tossing ideas around, and as Janet does, she starts promising, We’re going to write a book, and then she starts telling everybody that we walked by on the sidewalk, So, what do you think we should do? And she’s just so open and transparent. It’s really great. It’s a little nerve-racking sometimes too, but it’s great. So we would like survey everybody we had dinner with at that whole conference about, What do you think, what do you think, what do you think? And I’m not even exactly sure, you know, how things sort of clicked, because we spent actually months on the format. What was the book going to look like? And originally, what was it going to include? It was going to have even more than it has, because Janet wanted -- We both agreed, by the way, we needed poems and lessons, sort of, together. But then she wanted even more. What did we have? The page was really full. We had a poem and a lesson and something else too. I can’t think of what it was. Was it about the poet? It might have been, eh, it might have -- oh, I think it was. It was from the poet, like the writing of the poem, something like that. Which I love in concept, but when we had a layout, it was just like ehhh, you know, you just, it was more -- it was sort of the tipping point of I can’t do anything with this for a teacher, you know, overwhelming, I don’t know where to start. It assumed that you already loved poetry and that you would know what to do first, second or third, and I said, No. And she kept saying, You know, we need to get out of the poetry ghetto. Janet says that a lot, because we’re always talking Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections to other people who love poetry. She said, That’s nice, but that’s not changing anything for kids, right? That’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, see? We want to reach out to people who don’t love poetry and show them, You can do this. You will like this. You’ll be surprised how much you like this. And so that’s when as we were looking at what should the book include, I said, Let’s really distill and simplify. I think that that was my doing. I thought we just need the poem and the lesson, and that’s it. And then we could have ancillary things on the web, because Janet’s also very tech savvy, and she’s pushed me to learn a lot about how to use websites and marketing, etc. We can do more elsewhere, but the book itself has to be -- the thing we were going for, that a teacher opens it and says, I can do this. And I hear that a lot, and it just makes my heart glad when a teachers says, I can do this, because before they were like, I can’t do this. I don’t know poetry. I can’t do it. So, how did we decide to self-publish? I think it was simply a matter of how fast she likes to work, the speed. Because you know, it takes two, three, more years, years, to take a book from proposal to actual publication. And then -NJ: It couldn’t wait. You got that test coming. SV: Yep. I mean, that was sort of our logic. I’m sure it was Janet who knew about CreateSpace. That was not me. And I’m not sure how she knew about that because she had not done anything with it before. So I’m not quite sure. I’ll have to ask her again, Where did that idea come from? But I know that wasn’t mine. And so she was like, CreateSpace, it’s from Amazon. It’s print-on-demand. I’m like, What? So you know, I did some looking and I thought, Well, okay, it’s self-publishing, actually, but I thought, Why not? I don’t know. Janet always makes me feel like, Why not? And I kind of grew up with that. I guess it’s my immigrant parents, you know, who left Germany -NJ: They had to say that. SV: -- moved to Australia, and they’re like, Why not, why don’t we go to America? My dad opened companies when he was alive, and yep, I kind of grew up with this, Why not? Which actually I’m so grateful for, because a lot of people I’ve met in my life, most people I would say, are like, Let’s play it safe. I know this, I can do this. And I love that Janet and I both are like, Why not, let’s try this. So, that’s -- we decided on the self-publishing route. And now she calls us micropublishers, which I love. Because we established an actual company. NJ: Because it has a name. SV: Right, right, right. And that was her idea too. She’s very business savvy. I am not. I would just give it away, honestly. It’s so much work to be a business. But yes, so we came up with a company, and we went back and forth on what should it be called? That was a fun exercise, and I think I was the one who said Pomelo, because, gosh, we had spent months on this. It was going to be like Red Squirrel and Poetry is Us, and, you know, we came up lots of bad ideas. I was looking -- you know how you just Google words and the online thesaurus, What’s another word for a poem or poetry? I was looking around, and the letters of poem were in Pomelo, and somehow Pomelo popped up, and I was like, Oh, Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Pomelo, that’s a fun word, although a lot of people say “pa-mello,” and I say, whatever. But what was really powerful about it is that it has great significance in Asian culture, and it’s very popular in Asian countries, and so Janet is very big on that too. She’s so interesting. She’s such a down to earth, practical gal, but the significance of numbers, numerology and good and evil -Yes, it’s very big to her. So like we can’t launch on an odd day and stuff like that, and I’m like, Okay. She’s not really superstitious, and yet, you know, she has some ideas about that’s not lucky and that is lucky, so that’s been fun. I didn’t know all that. ST: Delightful. SV: Yes, right. So, we went back and forth, Pomelo, yes, let’s do that. And so the first book came out, Poetry Friday Anthology, K-5, and we decided also to research the common core because that was new, right? And the Texas standards were out, the testing that was coming up, and we decided to try and combine those. And basically what we’re trying to do is show people that really good teaching needs the skills and standards no matter what. We’ve said that for how long? But we tried to actually itemize and show, These are the skills that you are supposed to teach. Here they are. See, we’ve done it for you. But we tried to create these “Take 5” lessons so that they’re real organic and playful and fun and varied. It’s not the same formula over and over again. Each time it’s a little different, and it’s very interactive with kids. So that’s been successful. Teachers have really responded to that. NJ: So how many books now? SV: The first one was in 2012, is that right? Yep, because that was my cancer year, going to always remember that. And then we were like, What are we going to do next? And people were saying, Are you going to do one -- the audience was saying, Are you going to do one for older kids? And we talked about that at length, middle school and high school, and the common core standards and the Texas standards for middle school are much more extensive for poetry than for K-5, as you would guess. They’re older kids, they can do more. And so I was like, Well, it’s going to take more space in the book to create a lesson that is meaningful for middle school, but we could do it if we have the poem on one page and the lesson on the other. Previously it had been poem with the lesson on the same page, okay? But previously it was K-5, six grades, now it was 6th, 7th and 8th, three grades, so we were like, Oh yeah, okay, we can do that. So I had a lot of fun. I do all the lessons. That’s my proponent. I had a lot of fun with that, creating lessons that involved lots of technology and lots of drama and music, and that was fun. And so we did the middle school book. Some people have asked about high school. We have decided unequivocally we’re not doing a high school book, a lot of reasons. Mainly, in middle school it’s still -- it’s probably a specialist in English language arts or a reading teacher who’s teaching it, but they’re still sort of generalists, in terms of Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections covering lots of content in English. In high school, they really begin to narrow down. They think of themselves as academicians. They’re very specialized and a little bit snooty and purist. NJ: They teach content not kids. SV: Right. And we thought, they won’t want new contemporary poetry, live poets. They want classics, by and large. And they don’t want the lessons made for them. It just -- we thought, it’s not a good fit for our approach. Our approach is much lighter and more -- these are incidental things you can do in addition to curriculum. It’s not intended to be a full-blown lesson. If you’re going to do an hour lesson with students, this is not for you. You can build on it, but in a high school class, it’s just a whole different ballgame. So we’re not ever going to do that. I’m not, not interested in that. NJ: And you don’t need to, you have apparently enough projects -SV: Yes, we always have projects. Yes, so what was after that? We went back and forth. We’ve had lots of ideas that we haven’t pursued, but Janet thought that we should connect with the content across the curriculum in some way. And I said, Yes. I teach a course in poetry for graduate students, and I said the unit that is the most popular is “Poetry across the curriculum,” and she was like, Oh, okay, yes, that fits. And she said, Well, what is the area that typically is the biggest draw? And I said, Science, without question, because there is so much great nature poetry, animal poetry that naturally fits, for science instruction. So we decided to go down the science poetry path. But, once again, being the teacher, well we’ve got to connect with the standards, okay? So we had to really dig deep into the NSTA Next Generation Science Standards. That was an education. We actually went to science teacher conferences. NJ: I know. SV: Yes, very cool. Wow, that is such a different world! So different, and so fun, and they were so open to poetry. It’s amazing. Yes, really, really open. Who knew? More so than generalist elementary teachers are open to science. They’re not. There’s a lot of resistance to science. It’s very interesting. But we did the science one. And then that was 2012, was K-5. 2013 was middle school. 2014 was science. And last year, 2015, was the celebrations book. And in the science book, we had a few poets who said, they were Latina, Can we do our poems in Spanish and English? And we were like, Yes, that’s a great idea, absolutely! Because again, with my language background, I thought, I would love to validate many languages. And actually, one of the ideas I floated many times that we haven’t pursued is an international poetry collection, with poets around the world using their home language and English. But the whole prospect is so daunting, not the least of which is paying royalties in different currencies. ST: Yes, I think that’s a fascinating direction -- the idea of children’s, poets who write for children, it might be that they are adult poets who then have some children’s poetry. I’d be so curious about that. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections I’ve done a little bit of exploration of French children’s poetry, and it’s few and far between. But I’m not sure if that’s just because I haven’t dug into it a little bit, or -SV: It’s actually very popular in France. There’s a whole company that specializes -ST: But historically, I guess more, I was looking at that. So was there any older material? I think so, yes, because I was having -- anyway -SV: Yes, I love that idea. In the middle of all of this, I was editor of Bookbird for a bit. NJ: Right. SV: And that’s an international journal of children’s literature, and in my editorship, I wanted to emphasize poetry. So the last page of every issue was a poem, for kids, by a different poet from around the world. And so it was fun to explore. So I have those contacts too. And yes, I would love to do that. But it is quite daunting. First of all, the communicating with international poets is much slower. First you have to track them down, and then you have to tell them who you are. They have to figure out, What? And you have to figure out what language you’re communicating in. Typically there’s rights issues too, because a lot of them have publishers they want you to go through. And then they’re not fast in responding. I mean, most people have a much saner way of life than we do. They take six-week vacations, and they take a week to get back to you. NJ: August – the whole country. SV: Right, right. So my urgency is not their urgency. So it would be a long-term project. I don’t -- I would like to revisit that, but it would definitely take some doing. And then the characters of the different language -NJ: The editing you’d have to have. SV: It’s – yes. NJ: And Janet brought this up. I think, I don’t know how it usually works in anthologies, but you pay royalties to every poet. SV: Yes, yes. NJ: Is that unusual in an anthology? SV: No, poets get paid. We’ve actually paid more than average, though. We’re kind of proud of that. From what I’ve learned, poets typically get, typically, a hundred dollars per poem for an anthology. NJ: A one-time. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: One time. Sometimes more, sometimes 200. That’s fairly generous, but that’s about it. But where they make their money is then their poem is out there, and this is awful, but textbooks and tests want to use the poem, and they pay big to the poet to use the poem there, and that’s where poets make more money. ST: Wow. SV: How about that?! NJ: I did not know that. SV: Yes. NJ: So, if Lee does a collection, an anthology of Paul Janeczko, for example -SV: It’s a flat fee typically. I think Lee might pay $200 a poem, because his books -- he’s more known, they sell a lot. I would bet Paul pays a hundred, but I don’t know. But in our first four books, we paid per poem per book, so it’s an ongoing royalty, but it was peanuts. I think it was -- I think it’s 2 cents per poem per book, which sounds like nothing, and it was a labor of love for all of us. We didn’t know if it was going to sell or not, and poets were like, We love you, Janet and Sylvia, here, it’s great. But it’s ended up being more like $800 a year for some -- yes! -- for some poets, because the books have done pretty well. NJ: I was going to ask, how -SV: Yes. I mean, our money that we make, we just plow right back into the books. ST: But it’s unique on the market -- for having something for educators to actually integrate poetry. NJ: And the poetry collection. And so the new ones have, the new science one, has its own anthology just for kids. It doesn’t even have -SV: Right, right. That’s brand new. NJ: So that’s a new piece for you. Are you going to continue that? SV: I think so, I think so. What I would like to do, and Janet seems open to this, is that middle school collection, the 6th, 7th and 8th, I’d like to take those poems out and make like a teeny, cool looking rad you know, right? NJ: Right. Do it. SV: Yes. NJ: That would be one that’s almost done. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 15 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: I think so too, right, right. Minimal art, very graphic looking, but yeah, we’ll see. ST: So you mentioned Bookbird, but you have other columns that you write. SV: Mm-hmm. ST: So could you talk a little bit about your experience. Was that something that you proposed to Book Links or -NJ: She edited it. ST: Edited Bookbird, but you also do a regular for -SV: For Book Links. ST: -- for Book Links – the poems. I just was using it recently and I was going through it and acquiring, trying acquire all the gaps that we didn’t have, SV: Okay, cool. How did that happen? Well, initially I don’t remember exactly. It’s a long time -NJ: I thought it was Laura Tillotson. SV: Right, mm-hmm, yes. I love Laura. Oh, she was so great to work with. And initially, I just submitted articles to Book Links because I liked it. It’s such a practitioner-friendly magazine, and it was a chance for me to mentor a new colleague and a doctoral student, so I wrote with a variety of people just to submit. And I think it was Laura who said, I love what you’re doing with poetry. Would you consider writing something for us? And I was like, Sure, that would be great. And so one thing led to another led to another, and then all of a sudden it became like a column, you know, a regular, and I’m not exactly sure how that happened. I think it was a combination of they liked -- you know what, it really can come down to the editor likes poetry, and I’ve been really lucky. Laura was a fan of poetry, and then Gillian Engberg after her, huge fan of poetry. Now they’re kind of in transition. Gillian’s actually not editing. She moved to Switzerland with her husband. They got married. Unfortunately, the last I heard from her, things were not working out well. The job was not what they thought it was going to be. So I think she’s in transition again. I’m not quite sure. Anyway, yes, they sort of embrace poetry. And another person might have asked you for an article on something, and then they’re like, Thank you, that’s nice. But she wanted another and then another, and then all of a sudden we’re seeing, Well this is going to be a regular installment, which was great, even though the discipline of it – You got it. It’s like, Oh, it’s already a deadline again?! How the heck did that happen? Right, yeah so, there’s some days I cursed Book Links. But I love that they value poetry, and I love that the audience then is getting a steady dose of, Oh, yes, yes, I need to think about poetry. And it’s great for me too. It’s great for the recognition that I am associated with poetry. It’s about my other work, and Janet’s and my Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 16 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections work. It keeps us on people’s radar, basically. So I’m now kind of synonymous with poetry, which is awesome. I love that. But that just sort of happened, and yea, I love that. I love the Book Links. I can’t believe Book Links still exists, honestly. NJ: It doesn’t exist like it used to. SV: Freestanding. I think its greatest value is the online supplement nowadays. NJ: Yes, probably. SV: Because a lot of teachers can’t, or librarians, they can’t afford to subscribe to Book Links. I couldn’t subscribe to Book Links. I get it because I write for it, but otherwise, I couldn’t do it. So that’s a shame. NJ: Could you talk a little about you and Janet, that collaboration, and how that works, especially when you put books together, or maybe even plan programs, but you each bring strengths to it, but just a little bit about that. SV: Okay. Yes it’s great. I love working with her. And she’s like the most responsive person. I guess we both kind of live online, all the time. I guess you guys probably feel the same way, but you can count on that person to respond right away, right? And if they haven’t responded -NJ: You’re worried. SV: -- you’re worried. Is Sylvia okay? NJ: I know. It’s really good. SV: It’s been 20 minutes. SV: I know. It’s so sick, right? But it’s lovely that you have someone so simpatico. And when it comes to academic and these proposals, I write all the proposals. And it’s funny because I’ve been doing a poetry session at the Texas Library Association for 12 years now, and we call it the Poetry Roundup. It’s based on the ALSC thing. I went to the very first ALSC poetry -- was it called a “Blast”? -- and I just loved it, because it was just a session where poets got up and read their work. And I was like, Oh, this is so fun, and we should do it in Texas. So I started it at TLA, and it’s been going on 12 years. I’ve had like a hundred different poets over the years. But now Janet comes every time, and everybody thinks it’s Janet’s roundup. NJ: Okay. SV: Exactly, okay. ST: She’s a presence. Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 17 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections SV: She is a presence, and I love that. So any kind of academic thing, I do all of that. But she’s really -she knows everybody, and so she’s really good about reaching out and saying, Would you like to be part of our proposal? So I’m like, Oh, okay. I put them in, but she’s the contact. In terms of our books, that’s really even more collaborative. Typically, our most productive, like dynamic brainstorming, is when we are physically in the same place. That’s when we launch new things, I would say always. We’ll toss ideas back and forth via email, and we’ll get on the phone and chat, but to really be serious about, Okay, we’re going to do this now -How are we doing for time? Okay? ST: I was just going to say, we have about 5 more minutes. SV: Okay. ST: We should -- I didn’t want to look and interrupt you. SV: No, no, that’s alright. That’s no problem. So we do take great pains to make sure that we’re in the same place a couple times a year, actually more and more and more. This summer -- she’s also a go-getter for getting us to speak to schools and libraries. That’s her doing. She does a lot of that. Do you like to do that? Do you like to go and -NJ: Mm-hmm. SV: Do you? Okay. NJ: I haven’t done any of that -- they’ve stopped doing it. SV: Yes, exactly. There’s not much of it. In-services and that kind of thing. I don’t love it as much as she does. I find it really exhausting -NJ: It is. SV: -- the preparation and the execution, and she’s very energized by it. But she just shows up and she’s Janet. And I’m doing a hundred PowerPoint slides, right, research, articles, readings -NJ: That’s the difference, yeah. But I learn so much when I do them. SV: Oh yes, absolutely, and I try to then transfer that into my writing and my blogging. I mean, it’s all great, but it’s a lot of time and work, yeah. And Janet’s just Janet, and I love that, but she’s like, Well we can go do a week, like we’re going to Millersville University next summer, and I’m like, A week? Okay. So that will just take me a lot of prep time to have something substantive to offer. But that’s great. She gets it now, when she says, Oh, Sylvia, we’re going to talk for a whole day. Okay, I’ll do that, but -- Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 18 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Yes, so, this summer I was -- she had arranged for me to talk to a school in New Jersey, which was interesting, and those were not poetry lovers, but it was fine. But, because I was in New Jersey where she lives, we knocked out three extra days. I stayed over and we worked, worked, worked for three days. It was really great. That’s when we start to think, Okay, what do we want to do next, and how are we going to take this in that direction? And Janet has lots of crazy ideas that I think are very interesting, but we haven’t committed to yet, like she wants to make toys and -- I know, I know -- card games! NJ: Well, she’s getting this new machine that’s -SV: The 3D printer. This is Janet, right? ST: It’s marvelous. And I think this is actually a really nice spot to end up the recording piece of this, on ideas and what, because I imagine that this will, to be continued. SV: Okay. ST: I can’t imagine that this will be the only time that we’ll get a chance to talk to you, but it’s part of the oral history recordings. SV: I feel like it was too much of my life, though. NJ: Well that’s what it was. This is called your oral history -SV: Okay, alright. It seems weird, but -ST: Well, the reason it doesn’t seem weird to us is that we have been so incredibly grateful for your really tangible support of launching the PoetryCHat vision and what’s happening. NJ: Oh, I know, that huge support -ST: The response has been really -SV: Well, you’re welcome. Let us know what else we can do. ST: Absolutely. SV: There’s lots more. (End of recording) Sylvia Vardell Edited Transcript – January 8, 2016 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHaT) 19 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Joyce Sidman interview
Date: 2015-02-15
Description: Joyce Sidman is a Newbery Honor winning children's author and poet.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: SidmanJoyce_20150227
Text preview (might not show all results): Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHAT Joyce Sidman ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of
Show moreWestern Washington University Libraries Special Collections PoetryCHAT Joyce Sidman ATTENTION: © Copyright Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. "Fair use" criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. The following materials can be used for educational and other noncommercial purposes without the written permission of Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. These materials are not to be used for resale or commercial purposes without written authorization from Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. All materials cited must be attributed to Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections. This interview was conducted with Joyce Sidman on February 27, 2015, in the Special Collections Conference Room, Western Libraries in Bellingham, Washington. The interviewers are Nancy Johnson and Sylvia Tag. ST: Let’s start with your early writing. JS: Well, I’m thrilled to be here, being recorded. I think I was born a writer in many ways and always enjoyed words and always enjoyed putting them together, and probably put a few too many of them together for my mother’s liking. And also remember getting sent out in the hall for talking during class. So I think words were always vital to me. But I also think that a poet’s way of looking at things in metaphor is also a part of who I am, and that’s something that I think all children have. I remember walking on the beach with my nephew when he was only four or so, and he would be picking up shells and saying, Look, Aunt Joyce, it’s a hat. Look, Aunt Joyce, it’s a horn. Look, it’s a wing. And just that automatic integration of his imagination and the tactile reality of the world was so natural to him. And I think of that as kind of the basis of poetry, connecting, connecting things, finding ways to connect things and make patterns. And I do think you can be born with that. I think it can be cultivated also. But it always felt right to me to connect things like that, to compare things to other things and make meaning with words. And I loved finding that in books, and I loved making it myself. But I don’t think I really thought of myself as a writer until probably middle school or high school. And then there was a very, very patient teacher who would read my poetry, anguished poetry, and always find something nice to say about it. And I think she was some of the reason that I kept writing poetry anyway. ST: Were you writing in private as well, was this assignments, or was it something that you found -- I think you mentioned finding someone you trust to share, was that the beginning of that, or a person or…? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 1 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Yes, I think…I think I had friends who were also interested in writing, and we would share with each other, but I think teachers were really important because friends weren’t honest, and teachers were a little bit more honest. And teachers could tell you, you know they could look you in the eye and say, You have a gift for this. You love to do this. You should keep doing this. And I think that’s something that teachers can do that no one else can do. Parents can do it, but kids don’t always believe parents. They know that parents are positive no matter what sometimes, and so I think teachers are just so critical in that way of really saying to a child, You are good at this, or, You love this and you should keep doing it. NJ: You didn’t go to college, though, to be a poet. JS: Well, I did…I wrote through college. In fact, I had two independent tutorials. I went to Wesleyan where you could basically do whatever you wanted to. And two different professors had writing tutorials with me, one poetry and one short story. But I was not an English major because basically I didn’t like the other English majors. They were too snooty. So I decided I wanted to learn German because I had German background, and so I majored in German instead and studied German literature, and went to Germany. But I was a secret English major. I really loved English courses and took a lot of them, so I was really into literature then, but I just couldn’t stand to hang out with the English majors. It’s terrible to admit. ST: But you were in school, maybe, to be educated, because being a German major isn’t practical in that sense -- so you had the opportunity to go to college and learn. JS: Yes. I did, yes. ST: But without thinking necessarily where -JS: Well, I was just going to say, I think my parents really believed in a liberal arts education. I grew up in New England, and it was a kind of accepted course, and maybe not even that I needed to be thinking about a career, because I was a woman. And I did feel like when I graduated from college, I needed to work and support myself, but I was not shunted into one career or another. And in the back of my mind I always assumed that I would be writing, and that’s what I would doing. NJ: What is the distance between when you graduated from college and your first public, whether it was published, but your first public writing? JS: Besides high school? NJ: Mm-hmm. JS: Well, let me think about that. I did send poems to adult journals when I was just out of college, and I think I had a couple of them accepted then and then later when my kids were young. I had children by the time I was, let’s see, 28 -- 28 and 30 I had my two kids. And I was sending out adult poems whenever I could. And then I think I just got immersed in motherhood and reintroduced to children’s literature and just remembered all these books that I loved and how the authors put their words together and how evocative they were and how much my children loved them. And I think that’s when I Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 2 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections started thinking, You know, this might be your world. I think you have to find your people. You have to find where you belong, and, you know, it’s kind of an extrapolation of the not liking English majors, I was not enthralled with the world of adult literary people, and I feel like I needed that wakeup call with my children. And I just -- the children’s literature world just felt so much more comfortable to me. It felt like people that had imagination but they were friendly and they support each other and they love to play, and it’s just all the things that I loved about writing in one place. ST: And lack of critique, maybe, from your adult community, or? JS: Yes, I think it’s the competitiveness that really, I mean, I have a writers’ group and we critique each other’s work, but we do it with love, and we do it to support each other. And I felt like that was lacking a little bit in the adult literature world, so, but I don’t in the children’s literature world. NJ: Have you always been a part of that group, or is that after you published some work? JS: I joined a group in Connecticut before I was ever -- my children grew up in Connecticut, or at least they were little in Connecticut. They were born in Connecticut. And I joined a group, and this is a lovely coincidence. That teacher who encouraged me in high school, she lived in Connecticut. That’s where I went to high school. And after I’d followed my family around, as my husband was training to be a doctor all over the country, we ended up back in Connecticut, and she invited me to her writers’ group, so I was in her writers’ group. And she was still writing poetry, and I was writing poetry, and it was just like, Oh, this is so wonderful to be with Marsha again. I had to learn to call her Marsha instead of Mrs. Sanderson. And we would walk dogs together, and she knew my kids, and so it was just this wonderful coincidence. And there were other children’s writers. And then we moved from Connecticut, but wherever I’ve gone, I have found compatriots. And it really helps me to have that core group of people that support each other, and also can be honest with each other. NJ: Is she still alive? JS: No. NJ: Did she know any of your work before-JS: I dedicated my first published book to her. It was a chapbook of adult poetry. I almost brought it for you, and I thought, Well, this is children’s literature. But she knew of that. I gave her a copy, and she was at that time just on the tip of Alzheimer’s, but she really appreciated it. And that was--it was just great to be able to do that, give it to her. ST: And your own parents and your family, do they love your work and-JS: They do. ST: Do you feel known by them? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 3 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Oh yes. I think, yes. In the beginning it was a little bit like, So, have you thought about writing a real book, Joyce? Which all children’s literature people. But what they meant was a book that they would read and that they -- you know. And so I can totally understand that now. At the time it irritated the heck out of me, but I understand it now, and they were very supportive, and they love that I’m doing this, and they brag about me, and it’s kind of a fun thing that I can share with them. NJ: And your children, when you were publishing, how old were they when you were first starting to publish the children, your poetry for children, not the chapbook? JS: Right. I think I still have the note that my son wrote me. He took a message from the editor that accepted my first book, and I have it over on my desk. It says, “Call back. Millbrook wants to buy book.” And I think he must have been in the 5th grade or something like that. And so I have that in his little handwriting, you know, up above my desk. So they were -- they were -- I think they were totally floored because they’d been listening to Mom whine for ten years about not getting a book published. I think in a way, I mean who knows what effect you have on your children, but I think in a way it taught them that you can love to do something and you can be passionate about it and you can be -- You can fail over and over and over, and then you can finally triumph. And, if I didn’t teach them anything else, I hope that that’s what I’ve done ST: Well, you lived that. NJ: Yes. JS: Yes. ST: I mean, that’s a powerful example of words over… JS: And I had support from my husband, without whom I would not have been able to fail over and over again, so it was this wonderful sort of family effort of them inspiring me, both with their characters and with the literature that they were reading and my husband supporting me and me cranking it out. ST: Cranking it out. So there were some bumps? I mean, when you say cranking it, that makes me think that maybe there were some desert stretches, or not? JS: There were many, many desert stretches. When I say ten years, that was the time from the idea coming into my head that I wanted to write for children and the birth of my publish. And, in that period I was finding my voice and realizing I couldn’t succeed with novels. I didn’t understand how to. Plot is important. And also selling things to Cricket Magazine and places like that. ST: Okay. JS: You know, kind of getting a readership. And I wrote different kinds of things. I wrote essays for the newspaper, for the op-ed section, and that kind of thing, and just keeping going. I think a lot of the people that are published are the people that love it enough to keep going in the face a lot of rejection. Not everybody, but. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 4 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: Well, Ubiquitous has a bit of a plot. JS: It does. NJ: So, does Winter Bees. A lot of yours do, in some way, and how you envision the plot. JS: Yes. Right, right. NJ: In my class this past week, the question came up, and I’m curious to your take on it: What is the difference then between poetry for children and poetry for adults? JS: Hmm. It’s an interesting question. I think some of it has to do with subject matter and writing about things that are interesting, both to children and adults. I feel like -- I often feel like the poetry that I’m writing is more for me at that age, and I guess a lot of writers feel that way, that you’re writing for the child within you who’s still just floored by the world and excited by the world and believes in magic and gets excited about things, and that’s who I feel like I’m writing for, not necessarily children, but anybody who has that sense of wonder. But I’ve, you know, written adult poems that are about things that children don’t understand yet, or they -- it would hurt them, so I think -- I think subject matter is alive, but sometimes treatment is some of it. NJ: Can you elaborate on what you mean by treatment? JS: Well, I feel like adult poetry has an obscurity to it sometimes that -- or layers to it that children can’t decipher, can’t get under, and it takes an adult mind to work at it and get to that point. Children are -they’re often very literal, and there are even times when I feel I’ve been explicit in a poem, and I talk about it with a class, and they’re like, Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize that was going on. Some of them will get it, some of them won’t get it, and then you’re wondering, how many children are understanding this? And who -- which children are you writing for? And you can kind of shoot yourself in the foot by wondering that too long. You just have to write for that inner child. ST: Which, I’d be freed up once that first published book comes along so that you ‘re not rethinking, or second guessing, or not? Was there a shift or something? JS: I wish it were that way. NJ: Do you ever stop second guessing? JS: No. NJ: Okay, okay. JS: I think having the first book published is a huge threshold. I will not lie. And actually having the second one published, so you know the first one was not a fluke. ST: There you go. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 5 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Yes. JS: Then you start thinking, Okay, I can tell people I’m a writer, and I can really feel like a writer, and yeah. And that is really huge. And I have many friends who had not had that success, and they’ve been writing as long as I have, and so, you can’t just say, Oh, it’s just as hard with the tenth one as it is the first one, but -- because it’s not, because people know that once you have a published book -- I mean, they’ve never heard of it. They meet you. You say you’re an author. They say, Oh, what did you write? No one has ever heard of anything I’ve written, which is fine. But still, I know that. I know that I have published work, and that’s -- that is really huge. But, I think that your standards start going up and you start thinking to yourself, This is a really stupid subject. I can’t believe I’m thinking about writing this. Or, and I’m going to talk to this in my talk too, you start looking at your writing with loathing. You know, the next day you look at this and you think, Ah, I can’t believe -- I’m just going to rip this up. So you have to fight that. You have to fight your inner editor and just be willing to take risks, the same way you were when you were hungry for publication and you were willing to try anything because nothing else was working. And also people expect certain things of you. This format that I’ve been using, people love that format. And when I do different things, they’re not always open to that. Thankfully my editor is very open to it. But you do still have to fight. You still have to fight that voice in your head. NJ: Could you talk a little bit about your editor, Ann Rider, has edited how many of your books, and what’s that relationship that you have? JS: She has edited every -- all of them except the first two, so that’s eleven, maybe, something like that. And I think we have an unusual relationship in this day in age in that I don’t really send anything to anybody else. She rejects -- she still will turn me down, but I have this trust in her that says to me, If she’s turned it down, then it needs work, then it’s not ready. And I have people in my life who tell me I’m crazy to do that and I should just send manuscripts to somebody else, but there’s just been something about that woman and me that has worked, and she has been the reason that I’ve published all of these books, and they’ve been so beautiful, and they’ve worked. But I kind of like, I don’t want to mess it up, and it’s working well for us. We see things in the same way in a lot of ways, and she’s just so great at choosing the good illustrators. It’s just a really good working relationship. But she doesn’t -she doesn’t agree with everything. NJ: How about that Newberry call? JS: Oh man. NJ: Poetry -- come on! JS: Oh, gosh, that was just so amazing. ST: So walk us through it. Did you have some inklings? So kind of take us from -- Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 6 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: There had been a lot of buzz, and so I’m not one of those authors who’s gonna tell you, Oh, I didn’t even know what day it was, I was off in Costa Rica… Which Pamela Zagarenski was off in Costa Rica when this won the honor. But yeah, there had been a lot talk, I have to admit I was hoping. And I knew when the broadcast was, and it was one of those years when it was, I think, somewhere where it was -for me in Minnesota it was going to be a little bit on the late side. I can’t remember where it was that year, but. So I figured out when the broadcast was and when the committee would be going into -- for the announcements. And I knew from getting a call for the Honor book for Red Sings that they call you before they go out and -- So I thought, Okay, if they don’t call by blah-blah, it’s not meant to be. So I kind of hung around the house, and I had to meet a friend for lunch. She was going to take me out whether it won or not. And so I kind of hung around and -- Well, I didn’t take the dog out, just kind of hung around, you know, cleaned my desk… So then it reached the point, Okay, that’s it. You better get in the shower, you’re going to lunch. So, I got in the shower, came back out, the light was blinking. I thought, Okay, probably my husband. So I press the button, and it’s Cynthia Ritchie and she says, Hello, this is Cynthia Ritchie. I’m calling from the Newberry Award Committee. And it was like the floor had dissolved, and I was like falling through space. It was the most amazing moment. So I listened to her whole tape, the tape of her voice, and then I immediately tried to call her back because I just wanted -- I knew the whole committee would be there, and I just wanted to talk to them. And so I called back and I said, Hello, this is Joyce Sidman, blah, blah, blah… And then they called me back, and it was this whole -it was this whole rigamarole, and that they were finally on the line, and they were all cheering, and it was just -- I will never forget the moment of hearing her voice. It was -- it was an amazing moment. And it was almost better because I had given up. NJ: Yes. JS: And then she called. Because I think every author dreams of it, and I didn’t ever think poetry would win, and yet of course you dream of it anyway. NJ: Yes. JS: So, it was amazing. NJ: How did it change you as a writer? Did it? JS: I think actually getting that Caldecott Honor for Song of the Water Boatman changed me in a sense of making me more nervous about writing. But winning the Newberry and being validated for my writing as opposed to the illustration -NJ: Yes, right. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 7 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: -- I think it was only positive. I just feel like it was a wonderful moment. It was a magical moment. I couldn’t believe it happened, and it was just magic. I mean, I’m still really critical of myself, but I feel like that was that magic moment. No one can ever take that away from me, and I re-live it in my mind when I’m feeling low. I was so thrilled this year when Kwame Alexander won because that’s my publisher. They had sent his book to me to write a blurb for the back of the book. And I wrote back and said, I love this book! This is an awesome book! I want to write a book -- That was a book I read and I thought, I want to write a book like this. NJ: It had a plot. JS: It had a plot! And it had different -- different voices, and it was just a perfect book. So I was really thrilled. I’m always thrilled when poetry wins. It’s just thrilling. Sweet -- Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! I was totally thrilled when that won too. ST: So then, did you call your husband or call your -JS: I called my husband. I said, in this just deadpan voice because I was still in shock, I got a Newberry Honor. He goes, They didn’t give you the award? You only got an Honor? This is not the right reaction. ST: Wow. NJ: Wow. And your boys, were they at home at the time? Were they still living at home? They were -JS: No, they were off in college and, but they were thrilled and -- You know the way college kids can be about their parents lives, which is, sort of -NJ: Oh very -- that’s really nice, Mom. JS: Called my parents, called my writers’ group. NJ: And Ann. JS: And Ann. NJ: Did she knew before -- did she know before you did? Before they called? JS: I don’t know. NJ: It depends where they get the phone number -JS: I couldn’t reach her actually. She was there. I reached Lisa DiSarro, who’s the marketing director, first, who is just a doll. Yes, it was -- it was such a high. It was great! Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 8 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections ST: And then you went to the banquet, eventually. You had some months of reveling. Did you go to bookstores? Did you do some of that? SJ: I did the bookstore thing in my own hometown, but Houghton isn’t -- well I -- I shouldn’t even bring in the publisher, it’s -- Poetry is a tough sell in a bookstore, and I learned that kind of early on, and I don’t really advocate for that anymore. I love to talk to groups of either students or adults, but the bookstore’s not a great arena for, for what I do, and so, you know, Kwame’s going to totally crush it because he’s such a presence anyway. But, yeah, I’m more -- I’m more comfortable in schools, really, and at universities and places like that. ST: So you’ve had kind of a spring after your -- the Honor. You were -- you made a few bookstore appearances. JS: Yes, I did. ST: And then you had the -JS: Locally. ST: Okay. And then you had the banquet, which was where? JS: Yes. ST: That was -JS: Pretty cool. ST: Yes, mm-hmm. JS: Yes. Well I’m not that comfortable in huge crowds of people, and I don’t like to dress up, so -NJ: Uh oh. NJ: It was a mixed gift. JS: Yes, exactly. But at least I didn’t have to talk. That was -- that was lovely. But it was -- it was very magical. And, you know, then they break out -- The whole ALA is just so overwhelming but full of these passionate book people who just, I love them, they’re just awesome. NJ: It kind of goes back to what you were talking about with your -- you found your people. JS: Mm-hmm. NJ: You know, as a writer, and ALA is another type of your people, who are floored by the world, who are -- they’re floored by the world of children’s literature. And they’re all grown-ups. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 9 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: Yeah, it’s true. And I hear from a lot of those people, people who will write me out of the blue and say, I love your poetry. I read it with my students, or I read it with my children, or my grandchildren, and I’m just writing to tell you how much I enjoy that. ST: Do you take a lot of photographs? JS: I’ve just -- it’s a hobby that I’ve started. ST: Is that kind of recent, or is it -JS: It is fairly recent, yes. ST: Okay. JS: I’m going to show a lot of them on Saturday. ST: Is there interplay between the writing and the photography? JS: Yes. I think there is. It certainly appears to be from someone who’s looking at it, but I don’t know if that’s -- I think so. I think it’s noticing things. I love macro photography and noticing little things. ST: Yes, yes. There’s a lot of connections between how something’s structured and poetry. NJ: Yes, just even the lens you use. ST: I’m so interested in all the different forms that you like to play around with, and introducing them. I think Nancy’s earlier question about the difference between children and adult poetry, which I think is really true, a lot of the things that you surface, but, you know, the triolet, right? And the pantoum -- Do you sneak those in there? Do you boldly put them? JS: Well, I don’t write out and I don’t start out to write in any particular form, but I think sometimes the subject matter lends itself, and I think I’m particularly drawn to forms where you’re using the same line more than once but you have to present it in a new way. That’s always appealed to me. Even in college, I remember writing pantoum-like poetry because I feel like when you have that golden line, it’s wonderful to be able to recycle it and show it in a new way. And so that -- pantoums are some of my favorites. And triolet I really -- I love that poetry format and I feel like Alice Schertle wrote one, the perfect one about the cows wanting the grass on the other side of the fence. And Marilyn Singer wrote a gorgeous one about dinosaurs. And I was almost -- I had some trepidation about using that because it’s been done so well. ST: Oh, skunk cabbage -- is a lovely example of, you know. It’s hilarious, right? Yes, it is. It’s a funny plant and – NJ: It’s the perfect poem. JS: Do you have that here in Washington state? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 10 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections NJ: Skunk cabbage, yes, when I used to teach we had it. We’d take our students and they’d go. I wish I would have had the poem then. JS: Yes, right. NJ: We talked earlier about one of the unique, I mean one of the Joyce Sidman trademarks is the nature poetry and the nonfiction, alongside each other, leaning against each other, supporting each other, illuminate each other. Could you talk about that decision, how you make the decision to do that? Which do you write first? How do you revise? How do you use a poet’s eye to write nonfiction? JS: Hmm. Well, I’m not sure I can totally answer that because a lot of it is kind of organic in the way that it grows. But I start by reading a lot about the subject matter, and then I find specific creatures or plants or phenomena that interest me. And then often the next step is to do research, and I find out as much as I can about that particular subject. And then I wait for the voice of it, and sometimes that’ll come right away, sometimes it takes a really long time. But there’s only so much -- I have to discover what I call the coolness factor, which is what it is about that creature that really is the coolest thing to me. For instance, in Ubiquitous, when I was reading about geckos and reading about how they spread around the world, they’ve spread because their eggs are sticky and stick to flotsam and jetsam and float everywhere. But the cool thing, the coolest thing about them, is that they have these toe pads that interact at a molecular level with the material that they’re stepping on so that they can walk up walls, and I thought, That is so cool! But you can’t put that in a poem. You can have them going up the wall, but you can’t say that their toe pads are interacting at a molecular level. But kids deserve to know that. That’s just so awesome. So it’s that kind of thing, those kinds of things, that I want to include for them because I don’t know whether the child approaching this book will be most interested in the science of it or in the poetry of it or both equally, and I just feel like they’re both interesting to me so I deserve to put both of them on the page. And I think that’s really all that goes into that decision for me. It’s everything I want that I think is cool, but some of it belongs more in poetic form, and some of it belongs more in nonfiction. And I love writing the nonfiction. It’s really as fun to me in a lot of ways as the poetry. It’s tough to keep it short, and it’s tough to keep it aimed at 10-11 year old. And as I’m going to talk Saturday about it, the most difficult piece of writing I’ve ever written is the nonfiction note for the “Snowflake” to try to describe how a perfectly symmetrical snowflake forms randomly and exclusively in the chaos of the cold skies. It’s really difficult. It’s like physics, and it has to do with molecules, and so paring that down to this nonfiction note was really, really tough. It was a wonderful challenge, but it was very, very difficult. But I enjoy it. I enjoy the nonfiction too. NJ: How long does it take you to -- when I think of a book like Winter Bees, can you kind of give us the arc of how long it takes from maybe first idea and -JS: Some books take longer than others. This one -- Ubiquitous took a really long time because it was -there was so much science involved, and I wanted to pace it in an evolutionary way. But something like Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 11 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections Winter Bees, which is a little bit more straight forward, I would say probably it takes about a year, a year and a half, to write, because I have to do a lot reading, I have to choose, I have to make sure they’re all perfect. I have to find the voice for every poem. I have to send them off to scientists and see if I’ve done things right. And then I turn it over to Ann, and then my part essentially is done, except for cleanup work and looking at the book dummy and everything. And then it takes another two years for that illustrator to -- well, a year for the illustrator to create the art and then another year for it to come out in production. ST: And you mentioned that you have a curriculum or you when you -- So are you thinking of that? Do you make a little side note while you’re writing, or is that something -- the book’s out and then you say, Oh, I’m going -- would like to have this as a book to work with students in schools if I’m asked? JS: I think it happens in the year that it’s in production. I think, Okay, how can teachers use this in the classroom? Because since I go into the classroom and use certain poems as model poems, I look through the poems and think, Which one of these would be a model poem, and how could a teacher bring this into the classroom and use it? And I try to include some art projects too, but I’m not an artist, so I kind of just think about it from, What would a 4th grade teacher want to do with their kids? ST: So, you author the curriculum, the guides? JS: I do. Sylvia Vardell did the one for Winter Bees, and I didn’t even know Houghton Mifflin was contracting for her to do that. But it was lovely, and I didn’t have to do it. But yes, I don’t mind doing it all because -- because I teach that way anyway, so it’s not that hard for me to do. ST: It would be wonderful to hear you read some poems. JS: Alright. Any in particular that you would like -NJ: You used “floored by the world.” Is there a poem or two that comes up, you think, Yeah, this one really -- this topic floored me? JS: Well, let’s see. In terms of science, I think Ubiquitous was the one that really -- well, the squirrel poem was pretty fun -JS: I have to take a sip of water before I do it. I was just in New Zealand, and New Zealand does not have squirrels. And I don’t want to tell you how many New Zealanders said, Oh Squirrels! Oh, I would love to see a squirrel! And I think, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I also love the squirrel poem because Beckie Prange took a photograph -- This is my dog. She took a photograph of my dog. I put a rawhide treat up in a tree, and she took a picture of him trying to get the rawhide treat, and so there’s Watson in the book. Okay, so this is a poem I tried to write in a squirrel’s voice, so it’s called: Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 12 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections “Tail Tale.” (Transcriber’s note: In the book, this is a concrete poem within the silhouette body of a squirrel.) OK, your brains are big while ours are just the size of walnuts which we love to eat by the way with teeth that can chew through any sort of bird feeder you care to erect and believe me we will find them no matter where you put ‘em being insatiably curious and natural-born problem-solvers just as we find the nuts we cleverly hid last fall all over your yard even though you let your dog out at every opportunity Sure dogs run fast but what can they do in a tree nothing besides paw the trunk and stare at us hungrily as we dash limb from limb sailing out over the leaves with our parachute tails which by the way also act as umbrella, float, flag, rudder, and the warmest, softest, coziest quilt you could ever imagine oh yes indeed your brains are bigger…hmmm bigger brains versus tree-top living with a free fur coat and the ability to crack any safe known to man now really which would you choose if you actually had a choice which you don’t? NJ: Yes, awesome! Clearly as you’re reading this and looking at your facial expression, you’re tickled by this. I don’t think a lot of people think of writing poetry as being tickled. They say poetry is about emotions. Well, that’s an emotion. And I’m curious, did you always know that? When did you know that poetry can really tickle you? JS: Well, that’s an interesting question. I think from reading other poets and finding their humor in it, in adult poetry as well as children’s poetry, and feeling like it was okay to -- to feel a connection between a creature and myself and feel like I’m putting part of myself into the poem, even if it means using my imagination to become that creature. I think that’s something I love to do, and I think kids still love to do that too. But I think there has to be that part of yourself that you understand. It’s almost like that squirrel or like that gecko or it’s a part of you that’s bonding with that creature, and that’s the part that always tickles me because I love pretending I’m a water bug or a dog or whatever. I think a lot of kids do too. NJ: What’s next for you? What will we see next? JS: Well, what we will see next is a book called Before Morning, which actually was originally a poem in What the Heart Knows. It’s a poem called “Invocation for Snow in Large Quantities,” -- and it was one of the first poems to -NJ: Boston will not like you JS: Actually, my editor just said, You know, they all love that book, Joyce, but they love it a little less. And while I was working on this book, Ann Rider called me up one day and said, You know, Joyce -- she sends poems to her kids by email -- she said, You know, I was looking at that snow poem, and I put it with some art by Beth Krommes -- because she has a lot of snow art, she lives in New Hampshire -- and I Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 13 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections just thought, maybe we should do that as a picture book. I thought to myself, It’s the easiest book I’ve ever sold in my life. NJ: So it’s like Swirl by Swirl in that regard, so it’s a single poem picture book. JS: Yes. And it’s just a very simple poem about wishing for snow. And Beth took it and created this whole story that’s set in like a Quebec City kind of a place. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, but she created this whole story around it, so that’s hopefully going to come out in November, if she can get the art finished. And then there’s another book I have under contract that’s going to be similar to Swirl by Swirl, only it’s about round things, about spheres and round things. ST: So I have a practical question for you. JS: Okay. ST: So, you’re out a lot, getting inspiration and walking your dog Watson, and do you keep a little recorder with you? Do you have a little piece of paper? Do you have a brain that retains that amazing line that came to you a mile out on the lake? How does that happen for you? JS: That’s a great question. I’m going to talk a little bit about that on Saturday too. I have this terrible suspicious mind, and it’s borne out in reality, that if I actually bring the pen and the paper with me, nothing will come into my head, because part of what a walk is for me is just to release and letting my mind just drift. So what happens is that I will get the line, like I’ll get the voice of a poem. For instance, the “Oak After Dark” poem, I hadn’t -- I knew I wanted to write about a tree because I found out that trees do different things at night than they do during the day, seemed so fascinating to me. I wrote a lot of really terrible tree poems. And then finally I was walking through the woods and the line “to anchor earth, to touch the sky” came into my head. That’s it, that’s the voice of the oak. So I went thumping home saying to myself, “to anchor earth, to touch the sky, to anchor earth...” And I just went all the way home with that in my head, and then I wrote it down as soon as I got home. But that’s what seems to work for me. I’ll get something in my head and I’ll just repeat it until I get home. But I can’t take the pen and the paper. It just doesn’t work. I don’t know why. ST: Jinx it. JS: I know. It’s crazy. And I always tell kids to carry a notebook with them wherever they go. ST: Right, right. JS: And you know, they’re never really far. They’re at most 45 minutes away, those pens and paper. NJ: So, do you still use old fashion pen or pencil? If we walked into your studio and were -- just kind of peered over your writing, what would we see you use? Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 14 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: I write notes longhand, but I compose a lot on the computer. I like to see the way the words will look on the page, and I like almost to see the sculptural quality of them. And I love to be able to move them around. And I’ll print out different drafts of things. But I really do prefer to see -- My handwriting’s getting worse, and I just prefer to see how those words are going to look as a sculpture on the page, a printed sculpture. NJ: Would we hear you read -JS: Oh, yes. You’d hear me reading, talking to the dog, talking to myself. Yes, I think they do need to be read aloud. And often they need to be read to an audience, and that’s why the writers’ group is so important. Because things change when you have people there and you’re reading to them. You can tell by the tenor of the silence whether you have them or not. So I think that’s really important. I tell kids that in the classroom that they have to read aloud to somebody. ST: Can we hear one more -- maybe the oak? JS: Sure. ST: Do you want to read the oak tree or, choose? JS: Sure. That’s one of my favorites. “Oak After Dark” As nighttime rustles at my knee, I stand in silent gravity and quietly continue chores of feeding leaves and sealing pores. While beetles whisper in my bark, while warblers roost in branches dark, I stretch my roots into the hill and slowly, slowly, drink my fill. A thousand crickets scream my name, yet I remain the same, the same. I do not rest, I do not sleep, and all my promises I keep: to stand while all the seasons fly, to anchor earth, to touch the sky. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 15 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections JS: The best of me is in those books. I believe that. Sometimes I feel like authors shouldn’t be let out of there. All of this is because their best words are in their books. ST: Thank you, very much. Joyce Sidman Edited Transcript – February 27, 2015 Children & Teen Poetry Collection (PoetryCHAT) 16 ©Western Washington University Libraries Special Collections
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Title: Naomi Shihab Nye interview
Date: 2016-05-20
Description: Naomi Shihab Nye is an award winning poet, songwriter, and novelist. She writes for all ages.
Digital Collection: PoetryCHaT Oral History Collection
Type of resource: text
Object custodian: Special Collections
Related Collection: PoetryCHaT Collection
Local Identifier: NyeNaomiShihab_20160520
Text preview (might not show all results): of my parents were very curious, they were good talkers, and they exposed me early on, way before I could read or write myself, like early years, to hearing stories, hearing poems. At bedtime there w
Show more of my parents were very curious, they were good talkers, and they exposed me early on, way before I could read or write myself, like early years, to hearing stories, hearing poems. At bedtime there were a lot of rituals. My dad would sit and tell stories. My mom would read, would sing - had a beautiful voice. And so there was this sense of every day you heard text. And I think that really had a strong
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