My objective, and I’ve said from the very first, is to write across the curriculum, and to write across the age spectrum. Occasionally I’ll write a “I can read” book for the very young. I’d also like to think that I’m helping to create another genre which is adult picture books.
I happen to agree with you, I think some of my books really are intended for adults or at least can be appreciated by adults as well as YA or the YA high school audience. And you know, I’m trying to write about every subject under the sun, math teachers and sciences teachers come up to me and say, I’m sorry math and science it’s, they’re like oil and water to poetry. I said not to me, I’ve written a book called Arithmetickle, I’ve written a book called Edgar Allen Poe’s Pie where I put classic poems into math puzzlers.
There’s nothing under the sun you can’t write a poem about, nothing. And it really bugs me. I heard this today at the school I spoke at, one of the teachers said this and he said it with almost a certain amount of pride, it was too bad because he used the term, and this is to me it’s unfortunate, two words that I think are the worst words in the English language when put together: Poetry and unit.
When I hear a teacher talk about a poetry unit, I know that he or she is going to spend maybe 3 or four days at poetry and then thank the lord it’s over, we can move onto something really important. But to me, poetry ought to be an everyday experience for every child, and you can do it with DEAR, Drop Everything and Read, take five minutes, you can.
I try to encourage principals at elementary schools, you should be reading a poem every day on morning announcements. It would take fifteen to thirty seconds, you would have no end to volunteers, teachers, students, custodial staff, secretaries, everybody would want to be on it.
Billy Collins actually came up with that idea it’s called, “Poetry 180” for 180 days in the school year, he came up with that as the US Poet Laureate, but I wrote to him in fact, I said, “Why didn’t you include elementary schools? That’s such a wonderful idea.” I think it should also be done for elementary schools.
