I am a Leo. I was born in August and I love the sunshine. I'm like a cat. We live in a very contemporary house with windows all around it. Wherever a sunspot is, I go to it with my yellow pad and my fountain pen and I write there.
I don't think anything is as magical as a fairy tale experience by a child.
A poem really does recreate the language, and that's what it has to do. A true poem, I think, has to give you that shiver. That, "yes, it's never been said quite that way before."
I've always been a morning person, and what I don't get done in the morning I really don't get done at all.
I don't really sit at the computer from scratch. I prefer to get my ideas in my fingers and I write longhand first.
To me, poetry is a recreation, a renewal of language... The subtlety of what words mean and the fact that you write something and all of a sudden you'll realize that "yes, it reaches out. It meant that, too." Then all of a sudden you'll get a rhyme and the rhyme will throw up a whole new way of looking at things. It's this relationship that you never dreamed of.
One thing about being a children's poet or a versifier, is that there is a large market for your wares. These things really made the rounds. I would meet people and they'd quote my poems to me. It's great.
I write a lot of children's verse and I think it delights in the language. It pleases people. It's very musical. It's very lyrical and that's certainly a very important aspect of poetry. But I think that a lot of it is verse. I write well-wrought verse.
When things aren't going well, I complain a lot and get depressed. I whine and I eat and I go to sleep. I do all kinds of things. And if I'm smart, I'll go and clean out a drawer or a closet or go and pay my bills. I do get myself into situations where I'm not happy with what's going on. But you just have to wait it out and have faith that that dry well will fill up again.
I love to be read to, I love to read aloud and I love to read to children.
I always hesitate to call myself a children's poet, and I always hesitate to call what I write for children poetry. Though a few of the verses that I've written, yes, I think they are truly poems.
I have my faithful rhyming dictionary that sits up there on my desk, but I have to tell you, there are very few new rhymes that I didn't think of. I often just go right through the alphabet in my head when I'm looking for a rhyme.
