Some time ago I was asked to answer ten terrifying questions for the Booktopia Blog. I only just realised that the post was published back in December. You can see what the questions were that were so terrifying – and how I answered them here.
Poetry Friday: Brown Girl Dreaming
It’s Poetry Friday, and this week I want to talk about a poem I love, in a book I love, even though I only read it for the first time this week.
Perhaps the book first. I bought Brown Girl Dreaming as a gift for myself for Christmas, because I’d heard so many wonderful things about it. Since Christmas I’ve been busy and hadn’t got around to reading it until Myra at Gathering Books shared her responses last Friday, which reminded me to make time to read it for myself – and boy am I glad I did.
Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson is an autobiographical verse 
novel. Woodson allows us to grow up with her, sharing the story of her childhood and what it was like growing up as an African American child in the 1960s. Through the eyes of a child we see the civil rights movement, feelings of difference and a search for identity – as well as good times with family and friends. As an Australian reader I learnt a lot about the time period, and about Woodson’s life, but I also felt that this was not just a book about the United States, or about that particular time period. By connecting with Woodson’s story we also have the opportunity to connect with the experiences of people the world over. It is a universal story just as much as it is a very poignant personal one.
Onto the poem. As well as the themes and subjects I’ve mentioned above, Brown Girl Dreaming also traces Woodson’s early development as a writer – from being given a composition book before she could write, to the joy of being able to write her own name, to her early attempts to write poems and stories. From a young age, she knew she wanted to be writer. My favourite poem of the book, I think (though I bookmarked a dozen) is called ‘When I tell My Family’, and tells of how Woodson’s family react when she tells them she wants to be a writer:
It’s a good hobby, we see how quiet it keeps you.
They say,
But maybe you should be a teacher,
a lawyer,
do hair …
I’ll think about it, I say.
And maybe all of us know
this is just another one of my
stories.
(Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming, 214, p. 229)
I love the way Woodson shares this moment (I suspect there were many of these moments) through the eyes of her child self. She doesn’t editorialise or tell us that the adults were wrong. She doesn’t say that she was hurt or angry by the adult responses.
Like Woodson, I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a writer, and I had moments like these, too. When I read this poem, I marvelled at how Woodson manages to show us her response so eloquently in those last three lines.
If you haven’t read Brown Girl Dreaming, you are missing out on a beautiful verse novel.
Want more poetry? This week’s Poetry Friday roundup is at Live Your Poem.
Gnomes – and a poem
As part of a family outing yesterday we stopped in to look at Gnomesville, in the Ferguson Valley about half an hour from home. There are thousands and thousands of gnomes there, all left by visitors. There are gnomes under trees
and in trees:
in houses:
and taking transport:
There was every gnome-pun imaginable, but my favourite was this one:
And there was this guy, who of course is not a gnome, by gnome-body told him that:
I’m sure there’s a new story or poem brewing from all of this, though it hasn’t come yet. But it did make me think of one I wrote many years ago:
Lucky
A new day dawns, the sun is bright;
I’m basking in the morning light.
The birds they sing their lovely song
And I will listen all day long.
The flowers smell so very sweet;
The grass it grows beneath my feet.
I’m lucky that this is my home
Because, see, I’m a garden gnome.
(© Sally Murphy)
Poetry Friday: Poetry Tag
It’s Poetry Friday, and this week I’d like to tell you about the poetry game I play with my friend Rebecca Newman, called Poetry Tag. The game, which was Rebecca’s idea, involves each of us taking turns providing the other with a set of words which must then be included in a poem and posted on the Poetry Tag blog.
We’ve been playing tag for just over a year and it’s a lot of fun – though both of us have had times where the set of words we’ve been given has caused consternation. But we always come through, and along the way we’ve stretched ourselves in surprising ways.
The most recent set of words Rebecca set for me were: supper, my and virtue
It took me a while to come up with a poem I’m happy with, but here’s the opening lines of The Last Supper:
At that last supper
the men ate and drank
and hung on your every word
Little knowing it would be
their last meal together –
even when you, my heart,
told them one would soon betray you,
one deny.
(You can read the rest of the poem here).
A poetry challenge is a great way of stretching your poetic muscles. I would never have written a poem on this topic if Rebecca hadn’t chosen those words. What writing challenges do you set for yourself or others?
Looking for more poetry? The Poetry Friday roundup is at Tabatha Yeatts’ Blog.
Excitement Plus
Happy dancing here at the news that Roses are Blue has been chosen as outstanding for the 2015 Collection of Books for Young People with Disabilities by IBBY – the International Board on Books for Young People. It’s wonderful to know that this amazing group thinks Amber’s story worthy of this honour.
Smiling today – and every day.
The Green Page
If you’ve ever heard me talk about Pearl Verses the World, my first verse novel, you may have also heard me talk about the piece of green paper on which the first poem of the book was written.
You see, one night when I was getting into bed, a few lines of poetry came into my head, and I had to get up, find a piece of paper, and write them down. Each time I tried to turn the light off and get some rest, a few more lines came to me, and I had to jump out of bed and write them down. Finally, my beloved started to get restless with all the late-night poetry making, and I had to give it a rest.
That poem, though, didn’t let me rest, and over the coming days I drafted more poems – until I realised that there was a story being told and that the voice, who was Pearl, was not going to leave me be until I wrote her tale. I’ll be forever grateful to Pearl for choosing me and being my muse that night.
So, I’ve talked about this piece of green paper many times, but I’ve never before produced the piece of paper. Today I was looking for something else and I found my Pearl Verses the World file. Lo and behold, in that file was the piece of paper I’d talked about so often.
If you’re interested, here it is:
What surprises me still, as it has done before, is how little that first draft changed from that late night session until publication. I added the missing ‘s’ to sometimes on the first line and later, after the story was accepted, the line ‘at least I have shade’ was removed.
Everything else I’ve ever written has needed writing and rewriting and editing and agonising and – well, you get the picture. Whatever struck me that night and in the weeks that followed as I wrote Pearl’s story was special. Sometimes I think it would be lovely it writing was always so easy but then I think that maybe that once in a lifetime bit of magic was just that – a one-off. It gave me faith in my writing abilities at a time when my self-belief was low. And it gave me this beautiful book:
Sharing Pearl’s world changed my own world, so this little piece of green paper is something I’ll forever treasure.
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