It was the enchantment of spoken verse that led me to write for children.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have always used a great variety of verse forms, especially in my poetry for children. I believe that poetry begins in childhood and that a poet who can remember his own childhood exactly can, and should, communicate to children.
As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.
Poetry had great powers over me from my childhood, and today the poems live in my memory which I read at the age of 7 or 8 years and which drove me to desperate attempts at imitation.
I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry.
I was one of those kids who always wrote.
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.
Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.
I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.
It is extremely important to me to write for children.
I was born to travel and write verse.