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Ask Jane Yolen
Jane Yolen was our Young People's Poetry Week poet for 2004. Her poem A Poem Is... was featured on the 2004 Young People's Poetry Week bookmark, which is available for purchase from the CBC Catalog.
Q: Is it harder to write a poem or a book?
A: It really depends on the book and the poem. Some poems, some books seem to leak out of my fingertips on to the keyboard. Others sit around half-formed or half-finished for years.
Q: Who is your favorite poet and why?
A: My three favorite poets for adults are John Donne because he makes me think, Dylan Thomas because he makes me feel, and W. B. Yeats because he makes me fly.
My three favorite poets of childhood are Lilian Moore because she is always perfect in her rhymes, David McCord because he is always perfect in his sensibilities, and Shel Silverstein because he is a perfect nut.
Q: You write in so many genres—does poetry offer you a chance to say things you can't say in your prose works?
A: Of course. The precision, the compression, the necessity of the exact right word forces a precision, compression, and exactness in thought as well. I can say things with a single word in three ways. Or three things in a single way. And boy! Do I love metaphor.
Q: I saw pictures of all your wonderful grandchildren on your website. Do you think of them when you are writing your poetry?
A: Whenever I write what turns out to be a piece for children, it is because I am thinking of myself as a child, not some other outside-of-me child, even if it is a beloved grandchild.
Q: What advice would you give to a young person who wants to be a poet?
A: First, love poetry--of all kinds. Poems that rhyme and poems that don't. Poems that shake you up and poems that bring you down. Poems that make you think and poems that make you sing.
Say them out loud till they become part of your respiration.
Then write.
Q: Some of your anthologies of poetry include selections of poems by other people, as well as poems by you. Do you write new poems to fit into the anthologies that you've already begun editing, or do you select from your own poems the way you select from the work of other poets?
A: I have done it both ways.
Q: How/how much do you interact with the illustrators of your poetry collections? Do you have illustrations in mind when you write a poem, or do you simply write the poems and then see what happens when an illustrator
tackles them?
A: When I see the illustrations (or, sometimes, the sketches) I rejoice because it makes me re-see the poem. The only time I would comment is if it is patently not appropriate, or wrong. But when I work with my son, Jason Stemple, who is a photographer, I see the picture first and write the poem as my response to the photograph. •
Jane Yolen is the author of more than 250 books for children and young adults, including many works of poetry. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century. Her books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award. Jane attended Smith College and received her master's degree in education from the University of Massachusetts. Born and raised in New York City, Jane now lives in Hatfield, Massachusetts and St. Andrews, Scotland with her husband. They have three grown children and six grandchildren. For more information and a list of her books, please visit her website.
Photo of Jane Yolen by Jason Stemple.