 It's my second year in teaching a poetry for children and young adults class to MLIS students at TWU. Thanks to the venerable Dr. Sylvia Vardell, who taught before me, I have had an excellent curriculum to use.
For their midterm, students are asked to create a video of a poem which several poetry friends have donated. Originally, I was to teach for just a year and then last fall, I was asked to return and teach. The class was returned to the program. Because of the late notice, I have only had ten students this year. They are a wonderful dedicated group. You know how I love featuring student work of all ages. Today I am featuring:
Previous Videos
On Saturday, the last four videos of the TWU students will be shared. 
Ruth at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town is hosting the final Friday of National Poetry Month. She's celebrating 18 years on her blog.
Today I am sharing a video that peeks at some of the poets' backstories regarding the poems they wrote got Lee Bennett Hapokins' latest, Bless Our Poets. This book is a treasure for any pet lover. It is gorgeously illustrated by Lita Judge. She captures the hearts of all these beloved pets. I created a video on CanvaPro. Please know you can use the pause button to read the backstory if the video is going to quick. I tried to really slow the speed of the video. I am so blessed that the poets I reached out to responded. Final Call for Favorite Poems and Poets. I'll share next week.Come Back Saturday for the Final TWU Poetry Videos
I've been teaching a poetry for children and young adults class to MLIS students at TWU. It's my second year. Thanks to the venerable Dr. Sylvia Vardell, who taught before me, I have had an excellent curriculum to use.
Previous Videos:
I've been teaching a poetry for children and young adults class to MLIS students at TWU. It's my second year. Thanks to the venerable Dr. Sylvia Vardell, who taught before me, I have had an excellent curriculum to use.
For their midterm, students are asked to create a video of a poem which several poetry friends have donated. Originally, I was to teach for just a year and then last fall, I was asked to return and teach. The class was returned to the program. Because of the late notice, I have only had ten students this year. They are a wonderful dedicated group. You know how I love featuring student work of all ages. Today I am featuring:
Previous Videos:
On Saturday, the last four videos of the TWU students will be shared.
Heidi at my juicy little universe is hosting today.
It's Earth Day weekend and such a great reason to celebrate besides all the poetry goodness. Have you checked in with the 2024 Progressive Poem? For Friday, April 19 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core. Today I have an encore interview for Double Feature Friday (in fact the other interview is also an encore interview. Last year, during National Poetry Month, I interviewed Helen Frost. Today, she's back with her new book, The Mighty Pollinators. 
JRM: In my previous interview The Mighty Pollinators was in process. Do you have another project that you are working with him on? What do you enjoy about collaborating with Rick Lieder?
HF:That’s so interesting—I hadn’t remembered that Rick and I were working on this book the last time you and I corresponded! We have several new ideas, but I hesitate to say too much about a possible new project before it becomes more of a sure thing. I enjoy the process of our collaboration. We both pay close attention to the creatures of the natural world, each with our own focus. Rick is a scientist as well as a visual artist, and is knowledgeable and attentive to detail. In my effort to find precisely the right words for my poems, I spend a lot of time outdoors making close observations, and I find that the details in Rick's photographs, and the knowledge I gain from our conversations, enrich and strengthen both the poems and the end-notes. And of course the collaboration works both ways—each of us refining our work in cooperation with the other. JRM: I am sure you researched pollinators in depth. What information did you have to leave out? What was the most surprising tidbit of information you discovered? HF: I was amazed at how much information we were able to include, between the photographs, the poems, and the back-matter. It would have been nice to be more specific about which pollinators are attracted to which plants, for example, but I do think the book will serve as a great introduction for young children to an important and complex topic. Those who are interested, as I would have been at age 3 or 4, can learn more as they grow older. As for new information, I hadn’t thought much about night-time pollinators, and I loved learning more about the bats and moths as pollinators, as well as the little nocturnal mammals who carry pollen in their fur as they scurry around at night. JRM: I love you included the wind and other living creatures that some readers might not consider as pollinators. There are probably other pollinators not included. How did you narrow your focus? HF: We knew we wanted to give attention to bees, because they are so important, but we didn’t want them to carry the whole show. That’s why there is a butterfly on the cover. You’re right that there are way too many different pollinators to include them all, so we tried to focus on the most important pollinators. It would have been fun to include a picture and poem that showed a person hand-pollinating something. I have a pawpaw tree that didn’t bear fruit for a few seasons. I knew it needed to be pollinated with pollen from a pawpaw tree of a different species, so I went to a nearby park and gathered pollen from several different pawpaw trees, then mixed it all up and, using a little paintbrush, spread pollen on my tree’s flowers at just the right time. I was so happy to have the delicious pawpaws a few months later! JRM: Was there a poem you wanted but had to cut? HF: Yes, Rick had some beautiful images of mosquitoes, and we were able to include one of them on the right side of the end-matter pages. We didn’t have space for this poem though: Mosquito I’m a male mosquito. Females are the ones who bite, and only when they need a meal before they lay their eggs. As for me-- I carry pollen, on two feathery antennae, and six skinny legs. JRM. Wow, Helen. Mosquitos would not have been on my list as pollinators. JRM: How can readers support our pollinators? HF:First: don’t kill them! Every year, someone comes to my door offering to “rid your yard of all the creepy crawlies.” This negative attitude toward insects is dangerous to the insects (obviously) but also, for many reasons, dangerous to humans. And then, don’t kill the plants they pollinate. Early spring plants such as dandelions and clover are sources of pollen for the early spring pollinators, so try to avoid mowing them down too soon or spraying them with herbicides. Also important: Plant trees and flowers that are native to wherever you live. Thank you for this thoughtful interview, Jone, and thank you for caring about The Mighty Pollinators. Helen, I am with you about not killing the creepy crawlies (well, I do have to deal with the sugar ants at times but that’s another story).
JRM:Would you have an early draft of a poem and then the final draft so readers can take a peek at the process?
HF: It’s a little embarrassing to show people my early drafts, especially handwritten notebook versions, but I can see how it might be interesting. A couple of notes: When writing in a notebook like this, I start on the right hand page, then continue on the left page—just a quirky habit, but important to know if you’re trying to read this messy early draft. Note the date: 11/15/2020. When children’s lives were upended by the Covid pandemic, Rick and I, along with our editor, Sarah Ketchersid, started thinking about how to help young readers understand how something as small as the corona virus (misheard by one child as “corona pirates”) could change everything so suddenly and dramatically. We thought about other tiny things, and eventually settled on pollen as something “almost invisible” but not quite—very small and very important. like small children themselves, in a way.
Thanks for this fascinating interview and this gorgeous book.
Heidi at my juicy little universe is hosting today.
It's Earth Day weekend and such a great reason to celebrate besides all the poetry goodness. Have you checked in with the 2024 Progressive Poem? For Friday, April 19 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core. Today I have an encore interview for Double Feature Friday (in fact the other interview is also an encore interview. In 2021, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joanne Rossmassler Fritz with her debut book, Everywhere Blue. Today I am interviewing her about her new book, Ruptured. It is a very personal story as Joanne took her real life experience to create a story about a father, a mother and a daughter, a medical emergency, and a secret that could impact their lives 
JRM: I remember in your previous interview that you shared how you were working on Ruptured. Would you like to expand more on how you came to write this book?
JRF: It took me quite a while, Jone. As you know, I'm a survivor of two ruptured brain aneurysms, twelve years apart. I knew I needed to write about it, but when I first tried, years ago, it wasn't working for me. I had attempted two different approaches, both from the POV of a high-school student who has a brain aneurysm rupture (and of course it would have been a YA novel). One was prose and one was verse. But I found it hard to write either one because I was still too close to the experience emotionally. In the spring of 2021, I had a "eureka" moment and realized I needed to take a step back and write about a girl whose mother has a brain aneurysm rupture. Once I tried that, it all fell into place. JRM: I felt the tension between Claire and her mom. I sensed the discomfort between the two adults and how Claire was experiencing it. How did you create these characters that are so real and the situation so heartbreaking? JRF: Thank you for saying that! I spent a lot of time thinking about the characters, and taking notes in a red notebook. I knew I had to make them different from myself and my husband, because this isn't an autobiography. And I don't have a daughter in real life. I have two grown sons. So Claire was completely invented. Of course, there's a bit of me in Claire. I suppose there's a bit of me in each of my characters. You need to get inside the character's head and imagine what they would do in each situation. As for the situation being so heartbreaking, thank you for saying that! I knew I needed more tension than just the Mom's rupture. A rupture happens suddenly, and then it's over, so to keep the tension going, I came up with the idea of Mom telling her daughter a secret. I worried about it at first. Would a Mom really tell her 13 year old daughter something this personal? Would this make the character less likable? But my editor accepted it and we worked together to make the Mom more relatable. JRM: I was expecting a character to have a ruptured brain aneurysm, I was not expecting the secret Mom shared with Claire. What a weight to carry especially as an only child. In your plotting and writing did you start with “I will have a character with a ruptured brain aneurysm and build around it? Or did you have an idea of a teen with discontented parents and build around it? (I guess I’m asking about process) JRF: Great question! As I said above, I started with the idea of the Mom having the rupture, so everything had to progress from there. And by inventing Claire, it gave me the distance I needed to write the story. JRM: What led you to set the story in Maine? JRF: This one is easy! Both of my ruptures coincidentally occurred in Maine, each time while we were on vacation. I never considered any other setting. In fact, in the beginning, I expected the entire story to take place in Maine. But as I worked on it more, I realized the timeline meant Claire needed to go to school, and Aunt Bobbi was the perfect person to take her home to Pennsylvania, and stay with her. JRM: Would you have a draft example and its final poem to share the changes? JRF: Yes! Here are two versions of Fever Memory from p.39-40: From Draft 2 (the first time the poem appeared): Fever Memory Staring at Mom’s face, I remember when I was three or four and woke up in the night, hot, confused, scared. My fingers had grown to huge fat sausages. I couldn't do anything with them. They were far too big and awkward, the rest of me far too small. I whimpered, crawled out of bed. needing my mother. But my parents’ closed bedroom door looked impossibly far away down a too-long hallway. And tiny, that door, so tiny. I cried louder. And then Mom appeared far away and small. Too small. Impossible to reach. Until a second later she was there next to me, helping me back into bed, smoothing a cool hand across my forehead, whispering calm quiet words, soothing me. Loving me. My mother. Now, looking at her, pain stabs my heart. She loves me. She’s always loved me. Get better, Mom. I need you. We need you. And here's the final version, from Draft 4 (much shorter, as you can see, thanks to my editor's suggestions!): Fever Memory Staring at Mom’s face, I remember when I was three or four and woke in the night, hot, confused, scared. My fingers felt like huge sausages. I couldn't do anything with them. I whimpered, crawled out of bed, needing my mom. But my parents’ closed bedroom door looked impossibly far away. I cried louder. Then Mom appeared, helping me back into bed. She pressed a cool hand to my forehead, whispering quiet words, calming me. Loving me. Get better, Mom. JRM: How did you come up with the lighthouse as an image? JRF: This is also easy. Maine has many lighthouses, and I've always loved them, mostly for what they symbolize, but also because of the majestic look of them. I'm fascinated that, before modern technologies existed, in order to avoid treacherous rocks along the coast, the only thing sailors or boat captains had to go by was the bright light from a lighthouse. And a real person had to live there and keep the lanterns lit. Do you remember Keep The Lights Burning, Abbie by Connie Roop? I've always loved that book! In today's world, any active lighthouses are now automatic and no one lives in them. In fact, most of them aren't used at all anymore. But they're still beautiful. And they still symbolize hope to me. JRM: I love how the book ended, hopeful and yet not totally wrapped up with a pretty bow. Have you had readers speculate about what happens next? JRF: Thank you! And yes, I have! It always surprises me. It's kind of cool that once we write a book, it doesn't belong to us anymore, and readers take what they want from it. (And I like to end all my books that way. Everywhere Blue ended that way too, not totally wrapped up.) JRM: The theme of family dynamics is apparent as it was in Everywhere Blue. I love the incorporation of Aunt Bobbi. I had an aunt that my teen self really related to. Who were your mentors? JRF: I had two aunts, who never married or had children, so in a way it was like having two extra parents! They took me traveling to places like New York City, for Broadway plays and museums. It was a lot of fun. JRM: Do you have a favorite scene or quote from the book? If you were to give a reading, what might you read to the audience? Was there a surprise for you in writing this novel? JRF: A surprise? I think all of my books surprise me a bit, because I'm not a plotter. I'm a pantser. So as I work my way toward my end goal, something inevitably surprises me. There are poems in this book that I had no plan to write, but as I struggled my way through the first draft, I knew it needed more. And the poems popped into my head. It's hard to pick one favorite scene, but I do have a personal reason to love the poem Stairs on p. 242, because that's exactly what my devoted husband did for me. My memory was beginning to return then, and I can still remember climbing the stairs sideways, one step at a time, with my husband a few steps below me in case I stumbled. And my favorite quote is still the tagline: "Is it wrong to grieve for someone who is still alive?" Originally, that was the first line of the opening poem. If I were to give a reading, I'd probably read the first five poems or else I'd read Trompe L' Oeil on page 61. JRM: What are you currently working on? JRF: Another Middle Grade verse novel. It's not very far along yet, so I don't want to say too much! I can only say that it returns to an environmental theme, in the woods. And this time, it's a middle child, feeling squeezed in a large family. Thank you so much for this interview, Joanne. I hope others get a chance to read this book. And PF Friends, if you would like to win a signed copy, just drop a comment. Joanne is graciously donating a copy to readers of this blog. There is still time to share your favorite poem or poet by filling out this form. We all have more than one poem or poet we love, probably we have many mentor poems. Don’t overthink it, just share one. Favorite Poem or Poet Anyone? |
AuthorAll photos and poems in these blog posts are copyrighted to Jone Rush MacCulloch 2006- Present. Please do not copy, reprint or reproduce without written permission from me. 
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