Northern Ohio SCBWI - Featured SCBWI Member

Great, Good, Bad

A great book is a homing device
For navigating paradise.

A good book somehow makes you care
About the comfort of a chair.

A bad book owes to many trees
A forest of apologies.

This playful poem in J. Patrick Lewis's book PLEASE BURY ME IN THE LIBRARY, Gulliver Books, Harcourt Inc. 2005, is the one of the most succinct statements ever written on what makes a book great, good or bad. J. Patrick Lewis is a prolific writer of poetry for children, with 45 books to his credit. His poetic subjects range from math to nature, science to history, nonsense and everything in between. Pat's clever usage of bits of a child's world, and some worlds he makes up, enlivens his poetry with humor and excitement. The love of reading and language spills into the lines of his poems twisting and turning the words into pure pleasure.

Pat began his writing career in his 40's after teaching economics at the college level for many years. His books have won many awards and accolades including ALA Notable Book Awards, The Golden Kite Award from the SCBWI for a picture book text, and the Ohioana and Kentucky Bluegrass Awards. Pat's books have also received numerous starred reviews in library and trade journals.

His book tours have included a 10-city book tour with Lisa Desimini, for DOODLE DANDIES (Simon & Schuster). He does about 50 elementary school visits each year and will be in Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Vienna in March for three weeks to visit International Schools. His journeys will also take him to Russia this summer.

Pat has also written book reviews for journals and newspapers and has had innumerable stories and poems published in children's magazines as well as adult literary journals. He lives in Chagrin, Falls Ohio.

1. You taught university level economics for many years. Why the switch to children's poetry?

Sadly, I never had that charismatic teacher in 3rd, 6th, 12th or 16th grade who introduced me to the wonders of poetry. All the important influences I met were social scientists, hence, the B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in economics. But at 39, the Muse beckoned unbidden, and I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

2. Did any skills or strengths from your former career get incorporated into your writing process?

To most people, poetry and economics would seem to be polar opposites, and I'm not going to argue otherwise. Still, strange as it may sound, at least in regard to economics, I think both endeavors require a vivid imagination. Equally important is the fact that both require a certain public persona-as a teacher in front of college students and a presenter in front of elementary students. And since I'm a natural ham, I love both careers.

3. By looking at the depth and breadth of your subject matter (especially in the non-fiction themed books, Edward Lear and Freedom Like Sunlight, for example) it is clear you do a tremendous amount of research. How does the research spark the writing?

I haven't counted but I would guess that about a third of my books require research, which I love. The best example is SWAN SONG, a book of poems about animals that have gone extinct in the past 400 years. That research was riveting. But the fact is that nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to composing poems willy-nilly from whatever oddments of nonsense come to mind.

4. What kind of mental processing do you do to turn fact into poetry?

I keep no journal, I belong to no writers' group, though I would not discourage writers from doing so. For me, it's a matter of slogging it out. I'm a compulsive writer-8-9 hours a day, every day. Turning facts into poetry is a dicey business. As someone once said, poetry is not the rose, but the scent of the rose, so one must always try "to tell the truth but tell it slant."

5. How do you keep it all sounding so spontaneous?

Quite simply, I don't. Ninety-eight percent of what writers write, John Ciardi once told me, isn't worth publishing. Randall Jarrell said of Emily Dickinson that she wrote some great poems, some good poems, some arch and silly poems, and some so terrible "they would make a bureau blush." Emily Dickinson, for goodness' sake! But that's the way it is with the whole tribe of writers. You wake up every day thinking, Today I am going to write great poetry. Do you succeed? No. But that's not the point. Trying is the point. Nothing succeeds like failure.

6. In your piece for Horn Book May/June 2005 called On Originality in Children's Poetry you talked about "luxuriating in great poetry," imitating "only for poetic finger exercises" and borrowing from others while making a commitment to originality. Do you find yourself actively borrowing while you write or do you notice the borrowing after the fact?

Actively borrowing indeed. Yes, of course. Christopher Logue, the latest Whitbread Poetry Prize winner, has said, "Without plagiarism, there would be no literature." He's only partly kidding. We all stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us. I don't see how writers, as readers first and foremost, can not be influenced by the greats and near-greats. Every time I "secretly" paraphrase a line from Eliot or Auden, as I have done in my children's poetry, I hope that the reader will recognize it. It's a way of paying homage.

7. In a recent article for the Plain Dealer (pdQ&A, Sunday, December 11, 2005) you talked frankly about children's writers who shy away from the work required to learn the craft of poetry. Can you share some insights about the craft for those of us who are just starting or who want to make improvements to our writing?

When I began writing poems just on the sunshine side of forty, I thought they were brilliant. I was wrong. The only thing I knew about poetry then was that I loved it and wanted to go to the end with it. So I stopped writing and did nothing but read poetry for three years-books about poems, metrics, prosody, classic adult and children's poets-until I thought I knew something of the craft. My advice to kids who express an interest in writing is: Never write more than you read. Read poets from every school, from every era, every day.

8. What new projects are you currently working on?

Six new books in 2006, if I may put in a plug. ONCE UPON A TOMB: GRAVELY HUMOROUS VERSES; BLACKBEARD THE PIRATE KING; WING NUTS: SCREWY HAIKU; CASTLES: OLD STONE POEMS; GOOD MORNIN', MS. AMERICA: THE U.S.A. IN VERSE; and BLACK CAT BONE: A LIFE OF BLUES LEGEND ROBERT JOHNSON IN VERSE. There are twelve more titles after that in various stages of production. At the moment, I am working on a Holocaust story and a down-home tall tale.

Barbara Savage Huff writes picture books and middle grade fiction. She lives in Oberlin, OH where she is an assistant school librarian by day, cello teacher by evening, and writer in the deep of night (usually 3 a.m. when she has to put some thought that wakes her up into her laptop before it escapes.)
Would you like to be a featured member? Contact Barbara at barbarahuff@oberlin.net