Today At The Bluebird Café: An Interview with Poet Deborah Ruddell
By Kim Hutmacher
What is more wonderful than picking up a new poetry collection and instantly falling in love with the words, the imagery and all kinds of birds? Fun! Fun! That is exactly what happened when I read TODAY AT THE BLUEBIRD CAFÉ: A BRANCH FULL OF BIRDS. I wasn’t the only one who felt the poems deserved praise.
Deborah also picked up starred reviews from Kirkus and School Library Journal.
After reading this collection, I became curious about Deborah’s poem-making process. How did she create such a beautiful work? What bits of wisdom could she share with writers and teachers? I emailed Deborah, and as you’ll read below, she was more than generous with her knowledge of all things poetry.
1. What inspired TODAY AT THE BLUEBIRD CAFE?
I was writing poems on random topics – mostly about nature. I wasn’t thinking about a particular collection. Someone I knew mentioned that her aunt kept a robin in the bathroom, which inspired one of my first bird poems. Writing that poem turned me into an accidental bird-watcher, and I never looked back.
2. How long did it take for you to complete the collection?
I’m not even sure – several years. I’m a slow-poke poet.
3. Where do your ideas come from?
My ideas can come from almost anywhere, and I’m always so grateful when they show up. The best ideas usually come to me when I’m busy doing something else, like walking in the woods or reading. Something I see or overhear can generate an idea. It might be just a single word that sparks an idea -- anything that strikes my fancy. I try not to analyze the process too deeply.
4. When did you fall in love with poetry?
I was a little girl. My dad loved poetry, and he would recite poems to us at the dinner table. Mostly, they were fun poems like The Owl and the Pussycat or Casey at the Bat. I loved hearing those poems, and I guess I came to associate poetry with those happy times at the dinner table.
5. What is your favorite form of poetry?
I like all kinds of poetry. I write in rhyme because I can’t seem to help myself, and my poems are often funny, but I love reading unrhymed, serious poetry too.
6. Who are your favorite poets?
So many … Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Ogden Nash, Constance Levy, Joyce Sidman, Sharon Olds, Lilian Moore, Kristine O’Connell George, Karla Kuskin, Sonya Sones, Janet Wong, Lee Bennett Hopkins, and Douglas Florian … to name a few.
7. Are you one of those lucky people with a natural ear for rhythm and meter or did you have to work at it? Do you have any advice to share in this area?
I think I have a natural ear AND I have to work at it! As I mentioned above, my dad recited poetry to us, plus both of my parents read poems to us from a big anthology of children’s verses. Those things certainly gave me a head start, but I still have to work at rhythm. I read my work out loud constantly, as well as marking the stresses on my early drafts. Another trick is to ask someone else to read your work aloud. If they stumble, or the stresses fall in unnatural places, you’ll hear it right away. Also, I belong to a great critique group, which is invaluable.
8. Poetry can be a difficult subject to teach. Do you have any advice for teachers preparing to introduce poetry in their classrooms?
Some people may equate POETRY with something ponderous and dull – a thing to be dreaded or even avoided. But teachers all over the country are changing that attitude. They’re using poetry across the curriculum, incorporating it in ingenious ways and giving students the opportunity to discover poetry in a whole new light. There are so many themed collections that teachers can find poetry books on hundreds of topics. For a list of great ideas on using poetry in the classroom, I recommend that teachers visit two wonderful websites by two of our best children’s poets: Kristine O'Connell George and Joyce Sidman
9. How can your collection be used in the classroom?
TODAY AT THE BLUEBIRD CAFÉ includes fanciful poems about 22 different birds, -- everything from cardinals to vultures and woodpeckers -- so it’s a natural complement to any unit on birds. Even though the poems are fanciful, they are loosely based on fact, so students could compare what I have to say about a bird with what they’re learning from other sources. Do bluebirds really have a café to go to? Do they really eat “a sip of the lake and a bite of the sky”? How on earth can a poet get away with such exaggeration?
Because the poems rhyme, the book can be used to talk about rhyme. Students can be asked to identify the rhymes in a particular poem and to think of other words that rhyme with those.
When I do school visits, I have the students dramatize some of the poems using costumes and props. Mrs. Crow Gets Dressed and Bravo, Bobolink! are both fun to use that way. With a bit of scenery, Toucan Tour Guide could also be dramatized.
Hoopoe Voodoo is filed with wordplay based on the oo sound, so it’s fun for students to identify all those sounds. The Cardinal is all about red, and younger students enjoy counting the number of red things mentioned in the poem.
At one school where I spoke, the students made painted hummingbirds in honor of Hummingbird Search. They cut them out, decorated them with glitter, and hung them from the ceiling. Students have also made simple bird feeders and birdhouses.
The book is illustrated by the amazing South African artist, Joan Rankin. Her whimsical watercolors could inspire students to do their own bird paintings based on observation. Or they might copy one of the poems and illustrate it in their own way.
I hope that students could also be inspired by my poems to choose a favorite poem and memorize it – or, even better, to observe the birds in their neighborhoods and write their own poems!
I plan to prepare a teacher’s guide for the book soon, which I’ll post on my website.
10. Do you have any advice for budding poets?
Read poetry. Write poetry. Read what other poets have to say about their writing. Think like a poet. Keep an idea notebook. Read your own work aloud and have others read it to you. Revise ruthlessly. Join a critique group. Have fun!
11. I know you have another forthcoming title from Margaret K. McElderry Books? Can you tell us a bit about this book and when will it be available in bookstores?
A WHIFF OF PINE, A HINT OF SKUNK is a collection of poems set in the forest. The research for this book took an unfortunate turn when I broke my leg while hiking in the woods. I’m all better now and I can’t wait to see what Joan Rankin will do with the illustrations for this new book. It will be published in March of 2009.
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