Are you wishing you could write poetry but think it’s too hard? That you have to be “real poet” or “sophisticated”?? Read Erica Goss’s post about why reading poetry by kids is a great way to inspire your own efforts. It doesn’t have to be hard or complicated or obtuse or opaque or all twisted up strange to be poetry.
Write Like a Kid
I have the two latest California Poets in the Schools anthologies on my desk: If the Sky Was My Heart (2014) and Sing to the Heart of the Forest (2013). The more I read them, the more I understand why I read them, and why I, and everyone who reads and writes poetry, need these poems. In his excellent introduction to Sing to the Heart of the Forest, Steve Kowit explains:
“Unlike many journals and anthologies of contemporary American poetry that relish ambiguity and opacity, this anthology of young people’s poetry is deliciously readable, the poets managing to be surprising and creative in their language without diluting their humanity and ability to communicate what they wish to tell us.”
The insights in children’s poetry often startle us. A third-grader writes, “Green is the mighty bite of a snake” and a first-grader, “The world is blooming…
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Cupertino Poet Laureate 