The emphasis on sound in poetry is absolutely essential. Most of my poems do indeed rhyme but as I say that just doesn’t happen willy-nilly, it happens because you’re willing to work at it, and many people aren’t, they go for the cheap rhyme or the quick rhyme, and it just doesn’t work.
And children are notoriously bad at rhyming. And it’s not because they’re naturally bad it’s because they simply lack the vocabulary, one, and two they lack the time. I mean, what child is going to sit for eight, nine hours a day in a chair thinking about poetry? None of them, and they shouldn’t. They’re too busy living their lives.
So my advice to them is always first and foremost just write, why put yourself in the box of rhymes? It’s too difficult to write yourself out of it. My parents and teachers when I was a kid, used to say, oh don’t color outside the lines, well ask any illustrator in America and they will say the first rule of illustrating is break borders, go outside the lines.
And I want to tell children who are starting to write poetry, break the rules, go outside the lines, go outside the rhymes rather, and just write. You know, it’s so much easier than trying to come up with good rhymes especially if you have a limited vocabulary.