sallymurphy.com.au

Sally Murphy, Australian author

What Kathryn Apel Likes about Children’s Poetry

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I’m delighted to welcome another guest blogger. Today, Kathryn Apel has called in to share with us what she likes about children’s poetry. Welcome, Kat.


Poetic Imagery

By Kathryn Apel

Shaping a poem

the body builder

pumps

flexes

tones and

tautens

as

snip

snap

snip –

the gardener

prunes and shapes

and

whoosh!

the very

clumsy clown

colours the sky

with brightly bobbing

balloons of

thought

I often think that poets paint pictures with words, but when I’m writing poetry, I get three distinct visual images – and they’re all of me! Let me put you in the picture…

Firstly, I see myself as The Body Builder. Okay – so this is a bit of a joke, because in reality I can’t lift more than a bar of chocolate. BUT – The Body Builder tones up by pumping iron. As a writer, I tone up by pumping poetry. Composing poetry flexes creativity. It hones vocabulary. It pinpoints weaknesses and forces me to focus on specific ‘muscles’. The more poetry I write, the greater my control of my writing muscles – of words.

Secondly, I see myself as The Gardener – a topiary artiste, intent on pruning and shaping; looking at the bigger picture and trimming it into a recognisable form. There is a certain ruthlessness in laying bare a thing of beauty. Poetry is a lot like a topiary tree – each word carefully placed to create a sharp, clear image. Excess words snipped away. There is no room for clutter. Each word must earn its place.

Thirdly, I see myself as The Clumsy Clown clutching fistfuls of colourful helium balloons… but can she keep them all in her grasp? Poetry has a way of releasing thoughts to, float, fly, drift and swirl like a bunch of brightly bobbing balloons.

When writing poetry, I am carried away by my imagination…

Congratulations Sally, on the release of your second verse novel. ‘Pearl Verses the World’ was stunning. I know that ‘Toppling’ will be another rich, warm story to touch the heart. Hugs to you! And thankyou for letting me share your blog space.

Thanks, Kat. I feel inspired to go pump some iron now 🙂

You can learn more about Kathryn Apel by visiting her online. She is the author of This is the Mud and Fencing With Fear.

What Virginia Lowe Likes About Children’s Poetry

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The celebrations for the release of Toppling continue, and today I’m delighted to welcome another guest to my blog. Dr Virginia Lowe has dropped by to tell us what it is she likes about children’s poetry. Welcome Virgina!

PLAYING WITH WORDS: YOUNG CHILDREN AND POETRY
by Virginia Lowe

Rhyme and alliteration are a natural part of baby babble. Infants respond to rhymes recited and sung, too. The excited bouncing of a six month old to a familiar rhyme demonstrates this.

My two children began with nursery rhymes – some sung, some recited. They had favourites almost at once. ‘Baa baa black sheep’ was always responded to. The book used first was Brian Wildsmith’s Mother Goose, though there were several other nursery rhyme books soon added to their book collection, including Raymond Brigg’s extensive Mother Goose Treasury. Strong rhyme begs to be joined in. Rebecca at 1-8 (one year eight months) chimed in with ‘hop’, ‘stop’ ‘tail’ and ‘flew’ in the nursery rhyme ‘Once I saw a little bird’ before she had the words in her vocabulary.

The pattern of the rhyme tells a lot too. At 1-6 Rebecca would demand ‘more-ee’ just before the end of each rhyme. On a long car trip, being entertained by singing nursery rhymes, she allowed three repeats of each rhyme, but none thereafter. If I ran out of inspiration and started ‘Twinkle twinkle’ again, I was severely reprimanded.

Quotes from nursery rhymes made their way into speech as well. From ‘There was a lady loved a swine’ both acquired a useful phrase. Ralph at 2-8, stuck on a fence, begged ‘help me or my heart will break’ and, rather older, at 3-6 Rebecca, who still occasionally used her baby term for ‘pick me up’ asked plaintively ‘Uff uff me, or my heart will break’.

It was rhyme that inspired their earliest joke. A familiar rhyming text had a stanza ‘here’s a white kitten, soft and sweet, / and here’s a white lamb with four little black …’ ‘WHEELS’ shouted Ralph to the amusement of us all (2-3).

When Rebecca was two, I decided she needed a different type of poem, moving on from the rhymes (by this stage Milne was very familiar too) so I found Keats’s illustrated collection of haiku In a Spring Garden. She took to them with great enthusiasm, even the adult collection I had borrowed, and began making them herself, insisting that we write them down: ‘The hibiscus sits in the tree, and waggles his head, head, head’ was one, and there were others about frogs and birds.

Later they both enjoyed learning poems by heart, though they were always humorous rhyming ones – Ogden Nash or Doug McLeod, usually. They enjoyed listening to others, but as Rebecca remarked at 10 that ‘Poems are meant to be funny, or there’s no point to them’. She enjoyed listening to serious poems, but she never chose to learn them.

I maintained a record of my own two children’s responses to books from birth to eight, and kept the record sporadically from then to adolescence. From it came Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two children tell, published by Routledge in 2007. It is, to date, the only record that includes a male child; that looks at their reality-understanding at length; covers the sibling influence; and almost the only one that begins at birth – certainly in as much detail. Its aim is to convince people not to underestimate very young children – they can reason as well as you and I, it’s just their knowledge which is less.

There weren’t verse novels around at the time, but these have lately become very popular, started by Steven Herrick, but continued by Catherine Bateson and Sally Murphy. I’ve just read Sally’s Toppling, and loved it. It’s a study of friendship in Grade 6, four boys. It’s a wonderful read, with the short lines of the verse making it look very approachable. It’s an interesting fact that verse novels are usually shorter than prose ones – you can tell so much more in a short space by using metaphorical language – not having to spell everything out. But the converse is true of verse picture books – they usually have more than the recommended 500 words, because to make the metre and rhyme work (and they are usually rhymed – most authors having Dr Seuss as their model) you find you have to use extra words not entirely germane to the story.

I have been around children’s books since first becoming Children’s Librarian at the new Mooney Valley Regional Library in 1966. Since then I have lectured at university in children’s literature and English, been Judge for the CBCA Book of the Year Award and a school librarian. For the last fourteen years I have run the manuscript assessment agency Create a Kids’ Book – we also do workshops, writing e-courses, mentoring, and send out a free monthly bulletin on writing for kids and children’s literature generally. www.createakidsbook.com.au or contact Virginia on Virginia@createakidsbook.com.au if you’d like to go on the Bulletin distribution list, or if we can assist in any other way.

Thanks Virginia. Lots to think about there!

Writing Quote of the Week

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Merry Monday! It’s time for this week writing quote – and, as always, it’s a good one:

Good stories are not written. They are rewritten.

(Phyllis Whitney)

How are you at editing? I know I find it one of the hardest bits of the job. The story flows out of me during the first draft – but when I’m finished the hard slog starts. But it’s the editing that turns a story into a manuscript – and that makes the difference between it staying an unpublished manuscript or being snapped up by a publishing house and becoming a book.

Have a great week.

What Katrina Germein Likes About Children’s Poetry

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If you are a regular visitor to this blog, you’ll know that throughout March I’m having lots of vsitors, dropping in to help me celebrate the release of Toppling by sharing what it is that they like about children’s poetry. Today’s visitor is Katrina Germein. Thanks for dropping in, Katrina.

The Poetry of Friendship

My friend Anna has always been smarter than me. When we were ten she handed me this:

Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
(William Butler Yeats )

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Anna. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
We were sitting in her father’s office, beside the very trendy Mac. (My family had a Commodore 64.) Anna was obviously moved by the poem.
“It’s so beautiful,” she repeated. “Sort of like she’s walking on eggshells and if she crushes them she crushes his dreams. His life.”
“Who’s walking on eggshells?” I asked.
“The lady.”
I hadn’t realised there was a lady in the poem. I didn’t really understand any of it, ‘embroidered cloths’ and ‘half-light’, but I pretended to sort of get it because it seemed important to Anna.
“My dad loves it too,” she said.

It wasn’t the time to reveal the poems that my stepdad and I enjoyed together.

Poems like this:

Wolloomooloo
Here’s a ridiculous riddle for you:
How many o’s in Woolloomooloo?
Two for the W, two for the m,
Four for the l’s, and that’s plenty of them.
(C J Dennis )

And this:
When you squeeze the tomato sauce bottle
First none’ll come out
And then a lottle
(Anon )

And this:
I eat my peas with honey;
I’ve done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.
(Anon )

That year at school camp Anna and I performed our own adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk from Roal Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. It was the sort of poem I loved. A poem that rolled along as you read it out loud. A poem that was fun to learn by heart and told a story you could understand and giggle at.

My daughter borrowed Revolting Rhymes from the library last year. As she recited her favourites to me I was back at school, on the small patch of grass beside the veranda, rehearsing for camp with Anna at lunchtime.

The year following our Jack and the Beanstalk item Anna and I composed our own poem to perform. (Poetry wasn’t mandatory for camp concerts. It probably wasn’t very cool either. But we were drawn to it.) We wrote a parody of Clement Clarke Moore’s Twas the Night Before Christmas, set in the future. I think I can remember the first few lines:

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the dome
Not a machine was stirring, not even a phone
And you in pyjamas and me in my suit
Had just settled down to play Trivial Pursuit

“You have the gift of the rhyme,” said Anna as we wrote it.
“Huh?”
“You have a gift for rhyming.”
I’d never been told I had a gift for anything before. I knew I loved rhyme, I had my stepfather to thank for that, but a gift? Well that’s what Anna said and she even appeared to believe it. So when I later came across this poem I understood it perfectly.

How I Got To Be a Princess
Yesterday my friend said,
“You look just like a princess.”
I could not believe him.
Was he talking to someone else?
I looked behind me
and
in front of me.
I looked under the bed
and
on top of the closet.
No one else was there.
Again my friend said,
“You look just like a princess.”
He really said it to ME!
I felt all twinkling inside.
That’s how I got to be a princess.
(Bobbi Katz)

When my rhyming book Baby Gets Dressed was published last year Anna read it to her infant son then said to me, “You’ve always had the gift of the rhyme.”
And I should have answered, “Because you gave it to me.”
Anna made me a rhyming princess.

Recently I emailed Anna, What was that poem you used to love about treading on some one else’s dreams, like eggshells? And swiftly from another state it arrived.
Now I can agree with Anna. Honestly. It is beautiful. It just took me twenty-five years to catch up.

‘How I Got To Be a Princess’ by Bobbi Katz is used with the author’s permission: How ‘I Got To Be a Princess’ from Upside Down and Inside Out: Poems for All Your Pockets by Bobbi Katz. Copyright © 1971.

Australian children’s author Katrina Germein writes picture books. Her book Big Rain Coming boasts over ten years in print, international publication and CBCA Notable Book recognition. Katrina wrote Big Rain Coming while working as a teacher in a remote Aboriginal Community. Katrina’s other titles include Baby Gets Dressed which was selected for the 2009 Advertiser Little Big Book Club Reading Pack. This year sees the release of two new books, Littledog and My Dad Thinks He’s Funny. Katrina lives in Adelaide with her husband and their three children. Her web address is http://www.katrinagermein.com/

Thanks for dropping in, Katrina. What a wonderful friend Anna sounds – I wish every child could have a friend to share poetry with.

What Claire Saxby Likes About Children’s Poetry

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Continuing my month of celebrations of all things poetry. I am delighted to welcome another visitor to my blog. Today my good freind Claire Saxby, children’s book author and poet, drops by to tell us what it is that she likes about children’s poetry. Welcome Claire, and thanks for helping me to celebrate the release of Toppling in this way. Over to you.

When is a photo not a photo? When it’s a poem.

I write across a range of genre and markets in writing for children. My shortest book has only 26 words. I’ve written fiction and non fiction for preschoolers, emerging readers, confident readers all the way to upper primary. And I write poetry.

When the rest of my life is swirling madly and it seems there is no time to write, that’s when poetry is my salvation. When I have no time to work a plot, refine a setting and get to know my characters, I do have time to catch an image, to write a poem.

I think of writing longer fiction as being a bit like filming a movie and a poem as capturing a single image. A poetic image can sneak up and snare me and often does.

Of course capturing the idea is just the beginning and there’s work to be done refining it, just like post editing a photo. Framing, light, shading. The more I catch in the original image the better, but I know as long as I have the essence, the rest will come.

On Glenelg Pier

I lean against the wind
scuttle sideways
as waves clap pylons
and explode upwards
in daygrey fireworks

seagulls hunker
sea thumps shore
even fishermen
pull in their lines

only sealboys smile
slickblack surfers
ride water to sand
then footprint the pier
to leap again
into deepest wavecrest

I was in Adelaide last year and went for a walk on a windy pier. Black wetsuit-ed teenagers were running along the pier, carrying surfboards. Then they’d watch the wild choppy waves and leap into the crest. They’d catch the next wave to shore then do it all again. Joy and exhilaration was written loud across their faces, in complete contrast with all the other beachgoers, all struggling with the wind and cold. It was a lovely juxtaposition and I can still see the scene in my mind.

moon
round and ripe
the moon is a mango
with one slice gone

I was driving home late one night, quite tired and feeling not a little jaded (too much to do, not enough time to do it etc) . I turned a corner and there was the moon, hanging orange and large, just above the horizon. It was almost full, but not quite round. It was stunning. I slowed down and just kept stealing glances at it. It slowed down my racing brain too and reminded me of the beauty that is all around. Cheered me up no end.

A friend of mine suggests looking at the world through poetic eyes, looking for surprising details in the ordinary, the everyday. It took practice at first, but then it became almost second nature and images sneak up and grab me as I’m walking, or driving, or just about anywhere.

Beautiful Claire. Thanks for visiting and for sharing such lovely poems. You can visit Claire online at her blog, or her website.

What Karen Collum Likes About Children’s Poetry

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How exciting! Today I welcome another visitor to my blog, here to help me celebrate the release of Toppling by guest blogging about what she likes about children’s poetry.

Please welcome the lovely Karen Collum. Over to you, Karen.

The Thinking Reader’s Novel

I’ve always been a voracious reader, devouring children’s books of every kind at an alarming rate. Verse novels, however, are a new discovery for me. When I first heard the term ‘verse novel’, I had to ask another author exactly what it meant. I was familiar with rhyming picture books texts, but verse novels? That was something new. And now that I know, I have one thing to say: I’m in love.


The first verse novel I ever read was Jinx by Margaret Wild. Since then, I’ve read Sixth Grade Style Queen – Not! (Sherryl Clark), Do Wrong Ron (Steven Herrick) and Pearl Verses the World (by the lovely Sally Murphy). Each and every one of these books has been a delightful adventure into the world of verse and has inspired me to read in this style more widely and even attempt writing my own.

One of the most appealing aspects of verse novels for me is the brevity of the text. As a picture book author, I place high value on the ‘less is more’ concept. A standard novel has the luxury of taking the reader by the hand and guiding them through the story in many thousands of words. Verse novels however, are limited to a select group of well-chosen words, each of which much serve the dual purpose of enhancing the progress of the story and adding beauty and meaning to the text. The construction of a verse novel may well bear resemblance to that of a picture book, with each and every word fighting for its place in the text. Anything that is not absolutely essential to the text must be abandoned. There is no room for the unnecessary in a verse novel.

This leads me to something else I love about verse novels: readers are active participants in the construction of meaning. In my mind, verse novels are the ‘thinking reader’s novel’. The author gives enough information to make sense of the story, but leaves the reader to join the dots. As a reader, my brain is engaged from start to finish as I look for the subtle clues the authors place to assist me in completing my dot-to-dot. From clever use of headings, to the intentional placement of illustrations, verse novels are beautifully crafted and encourage me to notice the little things and to piece them together in a meaningful way.

Congratulations on the release of Toppling, Sally. I can’t wait to read it and get lost in a verse novel once more.

Thanks, for dropping by Karen, and for your lovely words.
You can visit Karen online at her website.
sallymurphy.com.au