Jan is Jan Fields, moderator of this interview with Laura Purdie Salas, and Web Editor of the ICL Web Site. Green shows names or usernames of people and the questions they asked Laura.

Jan: Welcome to SPECIAL GUEST CHAT: "POETRY" with Laura Purdie Salas! Welcome to our Special Guest Chat. I know a lot of folks are excited about this chat because we've already got a ton of questions. So, welcome -- this should be fun. Welcome, Laura -- I'm so glad you're here.

Laura: Thanks, Jan. I'm excited to be here.

Jan: Okay, normally I pester the speaker a little first, but folks are already sending in MORE questions SO I better make Laura work hard.Ready, dear lady? I'm going to start off with a question two different folks emailed in...and it shouldn't hurt too much.

Laura: OK, shoot.

Laura: OK, Pat and Bridget, and everyone else. I'd be happy to. First, if you go here: http://www.laurasalas.com/pages/poetry/Poetry_Resources.pdf, you'll get a printable list of a few of my favorites. But there are so many to choose from. Besides reading actual children's poetry books, I would recommend reading some books meant for young poets. Immersed in Verse is a fun new one, and there are classics like Poem-Making, by Myra Cohn Livingston. I find some books aimed at teachers for teaching kids poetry very helpful, too. Like A Celebration of Bees, by Barbara Juster Esbensen. Another kind of book that's really good for me is a collection of interviews with poets. I just bought Speaking of Poets and Speaking of Poets 2. Full of wonderful insight into the poetic process.

Laura: As far as websites, I like to visit the sites of poets I like. So nikkigrimes.com, joycesidman.com are good. Tracievaughnzimmer.com is another good site. Lots of interviews with other poets. I also highly recommend reading the Meter Readers columns that Becky Loescher writes for Kid Magazine Writers. Those are some of the top of my head, though I can list more of each kind later if people want more to look into.

Jan: Sadly Becky only has time to do a column for KidMagWriters now and again...but I try to buy them for the Institute too! So be sure to check out her article in Writer's Support.

Laura: Yes, she is a wonderful poet and writes so smartly about the process of poetry.

Laura: Hi Elizabeth S. My gig with Capstone. Ah, I'm having so much fun with this. For people who don't know what we're talking about, I'm writing a set of six poetry collections for Capstone Press--their first ever poetry books. I'm thrilled. Here's what happened. I've written many nonfiction books for Capstone over the past 5-6 years. Shortly after I sold a collection to Clarion, I ran into an editor with Compass Point, a sister company of Capstone, at a local SCBWI conference. He asked what was new, and I babbled on about my poetry sale. He said, "Poetry! You write poetry!? We're looking for someone to write a how-to write poetry book." Whoa...very cool. So talks about that progressed, and I emailed another editor I know at Capstone about this book. So the Capstone editor said, "Hey, you're doing poetry? We're thinking of doing a set of poetry books. Let's have lunch." We did, and they did go ahead with the series. She really wanted them to do it, but the company overall was hesitant. Poetry is not really done in the educational market.

Jan: Which is too bad.

Laura: Yes, it is too bad, Jan. I think it will change in the coming years, too, given the need to meet poetry standards in the school curriculum.

Laura: So, the editor and I talked a lot about how it might work. They're photo-illustrated, and we talked about whether to do the poems or the photos first, etc. So I agreed to do 6 themed collections for the K-1 range. I'm writing them at a pace of 1 book per month, which is insane. But that's how it all came about.

Jan: And you're looking at photos and writing poems -- right? How is that going for you?

Laura: I love it, Jan. Writing a poem in response to a photo is very cool. In fact, it inspired me to start a poetry diary for 2007, where I snap a pic every day and write a very brief poem about it. And that led to my group blog doing something similar every week. In fact, all of you are welcome to participate in this. Every Thursday, I post a picture on our blog, and people post 15 Words or Less poems in response. It's a lot of fun. You can check out today's picture at http://community.livejournal.com/wordygirls/ We have a good time with it. And it's no pressure!

Jan: Oh, I haven't seen today's photo...I'll have to check it out. I like adding my bizarre perspectives.

Laura: Perspective is what poetry is all about. That's the key to it, I think. It's bringing your perspective to bear on the world around you and then sharing that with kids.

Jan: True...and kids relate to poetry.

Laura: Some do. Some are sadly alienated and threatened by it. It makes me want to go around and personally find great poems to match every kid!

Jan: Well...the really long ones always flipped me out. I would think...wow, how did he sustain the meter for all that?

Laura: *grin* Those marathon poems are kind of amazing. As long as I don't have to memorize them, I like them!

Jan: Oh, wanna hear me recite Paul Revere's Ride? My teachers were brutal!!

Laura: No, no, no! On the brutal teachers, I mean, not on the poem! My nephew just had to memorize and perform a poem, and he hated it. I read the poem (he's in 8th grade) and could see why. It had nothing to do with a kid's life. *Sigh*. Some schools are doing the Poem in My Pocket (or PIMP) program. Each week, kids have to memorize a new poem. And school staff can stop them at any time and the kid has to recite it. LOL--the scarring, the memories!

Jan: Oh...that would give me a new appreciate for Haiku.

Laura: But you did grow up to like poetry, so that's a good thing.

Jan: Yeah...but only short poems :-)

Laura: How true is that! And in general, I do think short is better than long. You make it as short as it can possibly be to say what you need to say. Like all children's writing, actually. But even more so in poetry.

Laura: Hi, Linda. Congratulations! I think, generally, that it's fine to include poems for which you retain the rights, as long as they fit perfectly into your collection. And if the poems were published in fairly well-known magazines, that might help you get a quicker read, too, if you mention in your cover letter that a few poems were published in this and that magazine.

Laura: Hi, eggamy. Well, that's a good question. I used to submit to magazines. It's very competitive, very tough out there. Some of the print magazines that regularly publish poetry are Babybug, Turtle, Spider, Boys Quest, Highlights, and Cricket. I should say, I had very little success. I had a couple of close calls with Highlights, but the only poem I've had printed in magazines was an activity poem, and that was in Turtle.

Jan: One of the nice things about Boys Quest, Hopscotch, and Fun for Kidz is the editor actually loves rhyming stories -- so if you have a story in rhyme, you might want to consider them. She told me she would choose a story in rhyme OVER one in prose.

Laura: Jan, that's great advice. Because book publishers really don't want to see rhyming stories, so it's great to know which magazines do like them!

Jan: I've also seen rhyming stories in Highlights and Spider...but they only do like one a year. So the competition is brutal.

Laura: It is. It's really, really hard to get in. So be very proud of yourself if you get in to a magazine!

Laura: Meter is the rhythm of a poem, craftymama. It's the beat. If poetry is metered, it has a steady, regular beat or rhythm. If it's not metered, then it's free verse. Meter is determined by which syllables you accent, and it's something beginning (and more experienced) poets can really struggle with.r Meter is often thrown off because poets need to use a certain end word to make the rhyme work. Working with rhyme and meter is really a craft that takes a long time to master. Because you need that last word to rhyme with a certain other word, you might use a word that rhymes fine but doesn't really work for the meter. And what makes it extra hard is that, if you're a good reader, you read it out loud and it sounds great and natural, because you know what the rhythm should be. But if a kid or a teacher tries to read it out loud the first time, they might stumble over places where the meter is off.

Jan: By the way, there are a few good ways to "hear" your bad meter. One is to get a kid to read your poem to you. Kids almost never "cheat" the meter when they read aloud. So you'll hear the problem.Another is to find one of the reading programs...that reads text aloud. Because it will also not cheat the meter. Though it also won't hit the verbs with enough force so a kid is best. If you're totally alone and stuck, try reading your poem backwards...last line, then the line before...etc. You're more likely to read it in a natural rhythm and not try to make the meter work, and thus more likely to catch the problems.

Laura: Yes, Jan, those are great ideas. Kids will really show you where the problems are. Love the idea of a reading program, if the sound is natural enough.

Laura: OK, this is the last verse of a rhyming poem about a party in Spanish class.
I go down the hall for an el baño break
I could use a siesta. I'm barely awake.
I hang out and chat with mi amigo, Carlos
Until la Señora calls out, "!Adios!"

Jan: Ouch

Laura: Yeah--hanging my head in shame. Now, to keep my meter working properly, I need the emphasis or beat to be on go, hall, el, and break in the first line. But the problem is, the natural emphasis in el bano is NOT on el. It's on ban. It's on ban. So I was counting on a reader to "correct" that and read it the way I wanted it read. But it's not fair to do that, and it sounds really bad.Same thing in line 3 with Carlos. I need the reader to pronounce it CarLOS. But of course it's naturally and properly pronounced CARlos.

Jan: And if they aren't native Spanish speakers, they probably would read it like you need. But that would be not helping them do the Spanish either.

Laura: Exactly, Jan. It's a mess on so many levels! And sometimes I don't even realize it for ages, because I read it and it sounds fine. But anybody else reads it and says Ouch.

Laura: There's another way to check your meter, too, and that's scanning your poem. It's a little complicated at first, but if you're an analytical person like me, you might find it fun. I go to http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/markport/best/study/poetry.htm and follow the directions in #7 for Scanning a Poem. But I don't do it in order through the poem. I start with the last line and work my way up. I try to read each line as if it's just a note or part of a conversation, not part of a poem. I mark the accents in each line. Then once I get to the top of the poem, I look it over to see where the accents fall out of the pattern. But, as you said, Jan, having a kid read it out loud is an A+ way to find your meter problems, too.

Jan: Yeah, but I always have to scan. I even use a dictionary to make sure I get the stressed right on multi-syllable words. And it makes my head hurt. Ow ow! So all my poems are really short!

Laura: Me too. I often find at least one problem in my "perfect" poem. And sometimes many problems. Yes, ow ow. Exactly. The March Pinch of Poetry on my website is about meter, though it says a lot of what I just said. But y'all can read it and laugh at my bad poem again at http://www.laurasalas.com/pages/poetry/pinch/0703scan.html

Laura: Hi Denise, really good question. I think for intermediate readers, most of the market demand is through schools. Novels in verse are fairly popular with both middle grade and ya readers. Teachers especially like them because they appeal to reluctant readers. But there are few kids picking up poetry on bookstore shelves. Or at least that's my impression. I think most kids, once they reach 3rd or 4th grade, are not picking up poetry on bookstore shelves. So publishers that market heavily to the school market, like Scholastic and Holt, are good places to approach with poetry collections or novels in verse, in my opinion. Especially for those older kids.

Jan: And a lot of the magazines for teens and tweens use poetry only from the kids.

Laura: Good point, Jan. The magazine market for poetry is pretty paltry for older kids.

Laura: Oh, Miss Skye, can I ever. There are so many wonderful contemporary kids' poets. You'll find your own, of course, but here are a few of my favorites. Kurt Cyrus' Hotel Deep is, to me, a masterpiece. Other favorite poets include Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Lisa Westberg Peters, Douglas Florian, Joyce Sidman, and Susan Marie Swanson (these are all for the younger range). And Becky Loescher, when her books come out. For K through about 5th, read Lee Bennett Hopkins' anthologies. They'll introduce you to many wonderful poets. For upper elementary/middle school, check out Kathi Appelt, who has two books for teens that are poems paired with info on how she came to write each poem. Also Kristine O'Connell George's Swimming Upstream. Novels in verse poets that I love include Susan Taylor Brown, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, and Sonya Sones. There are so many more, too. Ralph Fletcher, Nikki Grimes. If you start with all these poets, you'll get a great education!

Laura: Sure, Petheia. A novel in verse has kind of a range. Some of them are really a collection of individual poems, but they are ordered and arranged so that they have a story arc and form a brief novel altogether. Hugging the Rock and Stop Pretending are two examples. Others are novels written in kind of a prose/poem form. The Fattening Hut, I believe, and Make Lemonade, which is considered the original novel in verse by many (though not by the author), are like that. Usually, the poems in novels in verse are poetic, but don't necessarily stand alone.

Laura: Hi Stretch. Poems without rhyme can be absolutely wonderful! And I encourage all poets to try them. Rhyme is not the only thing that defines a poem and without rhyme, the poet usually uses more of other poetic techniques like metaphor, repetition, shape on the page, assonance and alliteration, etc. Writing in lines rather than sentences is really what makes a poem a poem, and using expressive language. It's true that most poetry for young readers rhymes, because young kids love the music of it. But read Little Dog Poems, by Kristine O'Connell George, for some great non-rhyming poems for the very young. Also, Earth Shake, some geology poems, by Lisa Westberg Peters. Many of them don't rhyme. As you get into poetry for older kids (4th grade and up), nonrhyming poems become more common, too. And, frankly, they're easier to write. You have much more freedom, because you're not constrained by what rhymes with what. With rhyming poems, often the meaning of the poem is restricted by the availability of what rhymes, if you know what I mean.

Jan: Some poetic forms...like blank verse...are sorta defined by the lack of rhyme (though blank verse does use meter) -- you can have fairly rigid forms even without rhyme. And many Asian forms don't rhyme.

Laura: Good point, Jan. Haiku, diamante, concrete poems...these all very rarely rhyme.

Jan: It's hugely fun to study poetry and see all the things available to a poet.

Laura: And the more poetry I read, the more I want to read!

Laura: Um, Petheia. Here's the thing about silly poetry. That one is geared toward middle grade (upper elementary), supposedly. But kids from 1st-8th grade would enjoy them, if presented in the right way. And heck, kids of all ages love Silverstein. Wordplay appeals a lot to high schoolers. Joyce Sidman has a book of concrete poems called Meow Ruff. It's actually one picture book story, all concrete. It's totally unique. Check it out. But anyway, it's meant for young kids, but she has found it really appeals to high schoolers she shares it with, too. Would they pick it up on a Barnes & Noble shelf, though? Probably not. But if they're introduced to it, they love it.

Jan: Now we've talked about part of this writer's question...but the second half bears consideration, I think.

Laura: Hi Elizabeth. I feel your pain. It's hard sometimes seeing published books with things you've been admonished for doing. In picture books, often an editor wants a steady, consistent rhythm or meter for *most* of the manuscript. But that can get sing-songy and feel too slapsticky sometimes. So breaking up the rhythm can work well. Either with a line or two of a different meter occasionally, or with a refrain. So you have verses, kind of, in one meter, and you have a refrain or chorus in another meter. If you get Rules of the Dance from the library, Mary Oliver talks about purposely breaking the rules like that. It's not about children's poetry, but if you really want to understand the subtleties of this (which are hard to understand!) I'd recommend reading her book. And, basically, because maybe I answered this backward, the meter is the rhythm or beat of your lines. And we mostly want a steady rhythm, just like when we listen to a song on the radio. You expect each verse to match the verse before it. The same is true of rhyming picture books.

Jan: Also Some writers break meter intentionally to draw attention to a specific spot...or to be funny. If the break is really hard, it can be for effect and it's interesting to think about why they did it when it's a lone or unexpected break.

Laura: Exactly, Jan! It makes the reader pause or can have other effects. Oliver discusses this really well early on in her book. That breaking of rhythm is hard for me. I tend to like it very, very consistent. But it gets boring.

Jan: Yeah, plus, I work so hard to make it work...I don't want to mess it up.

Laura: Me too! The meter's perfect...and you want me to change it? Arrggggggh (throwing self in front of bus...or at least a bicycle)

Jan: A lot of meter stuff has to do with skill...when you're an expert...you can pop metrical wheelies...but when you're like me...you're happy with a nice even (SHORT) bit of verse...no tough stuff.

Laura: Good question, Elizabeth. OK, a rhymed couplet is simply two lines with the same rhythm, that rhyme. Um, let me find a quick example.

Jan: Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five
Hardly a man is now alive

Laura: Thank you. A picture book told exclusively in rhyming couplets is very hard to do. But because it looks easy, editors get way too many submissions of this. Check out Verla Kay's books for exquisite examples of pbs in rhyming couplets.

Jan: Rhyming couplets locks you into a very rigid metrical pattern and it can get sing-songy really fast if you're not extremely skilled. One reason Verla's work so well...and they do is because she works against the "convention" of long lines. She uses VERY SHORT rhyming couplets. So the books never get that sing-song quality.

Laura: That is so true. And yet she packs in a lot of info into those very short lines.

Jan: I've heard so many folks who think if the line has the same number of syllables, then the meter works.

Laura: Hi, Spitfireiii. Oh gosh. I haven't heard that one. Because you can definitely have the same number of syllables on two lines but have totally different meters, of course. I do sometimes count syllables as I'm scanning a poem, Spitfireiii. I do sometimes count syllables when something's not working but syllable count is usually not the problem. If you want to count something, I recommend counting the number of stressed beats in your lines You could either scan it or just read it out loud and clap on the beats. Then circle each word you clap on and look at your lines.r Do you have the same number of circles on each line? Now, you can have the same number of circles and have it still not work, because it might be that the stress or beat comes too early or late to match the previous line. But if you have a different number of circles, you are likely in trouble, so that might be a good starting point. Plus some common meters have different numbers of syllables.

Jan: Ultimately you're looking for patterns. A pattern in where the beats and the ...um non-beats fall.

Laura: Yes, Jan, exactly. Thank you for clarifying. Here are two lines from one of my favorite poems:
Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.

Laura: That's the beginning of "Seal Lullaby," by Rudyard Kipling. They "match," but the first line has 12 syllables, and the second has only 11. But they each have four stresses or beats, and they all have two unstressed syllables inbetween the stressed syllables.

Laura: I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that one, spitfireiii. I haven't written for the religious market before. My gut feeling is that there probably is, and that it would likely be for very traditional, rhyming poems.

Jan: The religious magazine market does buy some poetry...Pockets does, for example -- and others. A lot of what they look for though is seasonal poems. Right now, the religious magazine market is suffering though so all the magazines are buying a bit less...alas. Religious picture books rhyme a fair bit too...but the publishing world amoung strictly Christian publishers works totally different from publishing with the commerical trades -- it's kind of a world of it's own.

Laura: I think for that preschool age, definitely the sing-songy say-aloud style of verse is much in demand. But the poetry market is incredibly tight, so your poems really have to sing, to be different, original.

Jan: Plus, nursery rhymes...the traditional ones are kind of a poetic mess. Often they don't rhyme in Modern English, and maybe not in Old English either.

Laura: And the topics of most of them wouldn't sell, either.

Jan: And they include extraneous bits to force a rhyme. So you wouldn't want to try to match them because some changes would be necessary for a modern market.

Laura: But come up with a modern set of nursery rhymes that really relates to kids' lives today, and you might have a hit. But they'd have to be flawlessly done.

Laura: Craftymama, great question. We read a lot about using poetic techniques in prose. For read-aloud stories in particular, getting a certain rhythm going is great. But, it's not as regular/strict as in a poem. It's a matter of perhaps using similar sentence structure repeatedlyr and of using an almost poetic (but not necessarily rhymed) refrain that is repeated several times. Those can be good poetic techniques to put in your stories. Also, reading out loud repeatedly to see how your voice rises and falls with the natural rhythm of your words and sentences. Shoot, there was something else I was going to mention, but I forgot it while I was typing.

Jan: I'll babble a second and maybe you'll remember. Beautiful writing is part natural rhythms, part balance, part word choice for sound and evocative content, part attention to the "baggage of each word" -- it all comes together. But you don't want to fall into any quickly identifiable patterns of meter because you'll distract the reader is you slip out again. The overall feel you want is language that feels delicious to read aloud. Linda Sue Park says she'll rewrite each sentence ten times if that's what it takes for find that really yummy flow.

Laura: Beautifully said, Jan. I think flow is a key word. In poems and in stories, some words are hard to say next to each other. Like, "flocked trees," for instance. It's just hard to say, and I wouldn't use two words with those sounds next to each other in a poem or in prose. unless I was going for a certain pause or a hard sound because it's an angry mood or something and I want the feel of the words to reflect that.

Laura: Liz, congratulations! Having anyone request poetry from you, that's fabulous! Yes, rhyming, definitely. And short and simple. Check out Babybug and how short and simple their poems are. It should be part of their everyday world, generally. Babies, Mom, Dad, pets, home, etc. Unless, of course, they specify something else! But those are generally features of very young poems. And simple words--but they can still be surprising or unexpected.

Jan: You also have generally avoid a lot of figurative language since kids are very literal at that age. If you say a spider is a light dancer, the kid will think they actually dance. Generally the ability to abstract even that much comes at over 5 years.

Laura: Great point! Very concrete, specific language is good. Not pretty, good, beautiful, etc. Name objects. Make things move. Lots of nouns and verbs. I think writing to a picture is really fun!

Jan: Oh, if your library has National Geographic Little Kids or Wild Animal Baby...you might want to look at them too.

Laura: Pretend you're a 3-year-old and look at the picture and brainstorm lists of nouns and verbs that the picture inspires. And Liz, I'm thinking probably only 4 lines per poem, though of course it depends on the publication. But 4-8 lines is typical for this age. Often with a funny or surprising twist on the last line. Have fun with it. That's wonderful that they requested poems. You can do it!

Jan: Okay...we're right about at time. I want to thank you so much for joining us.

Laura: This has been fun. Great questions, too. You guys have inspired me, too. It's always fun to have others ask questions and have to think about answers. I wish everyone great adventures with your poetry!

Laura: Yes, free verse is bought by some magazines. Turtle sometimes does it (or at least did back when I gathered up samples of poems from various magazines). Cricket and Cicada use lots of free verse, and in general, magazines for older kids use more free verse. Magazines for young kids do tend to use more rhyming poetry, because it's very appealing and accessible for young kids.

Laura: I love to write in forms. Haiku, acrostic, cinquain, diamante, limerick, poems for two voices...these are all so much fun to me. It makes writing a poem kind of like solving a puzzle. In the Capstone books I'm doing now, I use various forms in each book.

Laura: For me, these are the things that help:

Laura: Hi Gayle! About 6-7 years ago, I was trying to do some writing just to vent about a family health crisis. I was completely surprised when what poured out on the page were poems from a kid's point of view. They weren't good poems, mind you. But they were poems. For a couple of years, I felt inclined to write poetry only about topics that were pretty emotional for me. But the more I wrote, the more I loved it, and it has become my first choice for my way of interpreting the world.

Laura: I didn't until recently. My regular critique groups give me great feedback on my poetry, but I do belong to a small group that works solely on poetry. They give me unbelievably good feedback.

Laura: It's a fun road to go down! I do think one important thing is not forcing it. Of course, revising is very, very necessary. But for me, if a poem isn't coming, it doesn't do me any good to try to force it. With a story or a novel or a picture book, you can mess with the plot and structure and change it and rework it. With a poem, it depends on magic. And if you have to rework it too much, I think the magic fades away. If a poem isn't working, I move on to a completely different poem. Or I might try the same topic but with a different form.

Laura: Thanks! Where did the idea come from? Real life. My daughter Maddie had to have two teeth pulled. We left the dentist's office and Maddie had two twisted napkins sticking out of her mouth to staunch the bleeding. I thought she looked like a walrus, and we had fun laughing about that. I wrote a silly poem about that, because it made me think about the ways kids resemble animals. A bit after that, I visited Maddie's 3rd grade classroom to lead a poetry activity. I had them all write poems about a way each one of them resembled some animal. At that point it struck me that this could be a really fun collection to create.

Laura: You know, this is the hardest thing about rhymed poetry, and much of it is intuitive, so it's hard for me to give advice on. I would say that using end-of-line words that are one-syllable definitely makes it easier. You want words that are easy to rhyme, but you want to avoid the cliched rhymes: flower, hour, power, etc. Also, pay as much attention to the rest of your line as you do that last word. That's the problem of lots of rhymed poetry: the whole poem is in service to the rhyme. Spend lots of time making the *rest* of the line surprising, vivid, fun. Make it so great to read that it's a wonderful poem even *without* the rhyming end words. That way, your poem is a fabulous poem, not just an excuse for some lines that rhyme.

Laura: Haiku is a lovely, brief poetic form of Japanese origins. Typically, it's interpreted in English as three lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. It usually describes one moment in nature, and traditionally is set in a specific season. Here's one site to learn more about haiku: http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm Also, read Black Swan White Crow, by J. Patrick Lewis, for some stunning haiku presented for kids.

Laura: Kim Hutmacher (Ron & Kim Hutmacher) offers a class in this. I haven't taken it, but it sounded interesting. You could email her for more info. She's the poetry editor at Wee Ones magazine.