New Children's Poet Laureate, Kenn Nesbitt

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I'm reminded of how much fun poetry can be by reading an interesting article this week about Kenn Nesbitt. The article appeared in Kid'sPost, which is on the back page of The Washington Post/style (print ed.-6/17/13; online version here). Nesbitt is the newly-appointed Children's Poet Laureate, a two-year honor. 

     "The Green Bird" was my first stab at poetry, age 11.  It was not funny, but I think was a bit wistful and adventurous at the same time. My second effort was much later, when I composed verse about my early childhood's front yard. There, a pond with lily pads (I'm not kidding) hosted soft tadpoles that swam with the goldfish. 
   When my mother, who enjoyed "The Green Bird," heard my later poem (full of memories of June Bugs, Lightning Bugs, jars, friends, and frogs), she commented: "It sounds like we lived in a swamp." I laughed, then frowned, then put the poem away for another day. Boo-hoo. 

    In my childhood, my mother gently built into me a love of words and books, along with play-construction blocks, scissors, jigsaw puzzles, coloring books, and large crayon boxes with unusual color choices like plum, fuscia, taupe, aquamarine, and teal. Of course I had no clue about color wheels, only "purple, pink, brown, and blue." 

   Much later, my young daughters' afternoon naps in summer gave me free time to memorize poetry or song verses...nothing as complicated as "Lady of Shalott." We practiced fun poems, after the naps, and funny rhyming song-stories. We laughed singing along with Allan Sherman records. The longest poem I learned and tried to lead them to sing about concerned a fox stalking the geese (or chicken house, whatever you prefer). That one took a while to learn, even a few verses. 

Now back to the most recent discovery for me...Kenn Nesbitt, who told The  Post that as a kid he enjoyed "Casey at the Bat." It's over 100 years old! A software professional as an adult, Nesbitt was with friends, including a 4-year-old that did not want to eat her dinner. He said he thought he "'could write a poem about a girl who wouldn't eat her dinner,'..." and thus came "Scrawny Tawny Skinner." It was followed by 50 plus poems for children. His one goal: "'I just want them to laugh...I'm not trying to deliver a message....I want to give them something so funny that they can't not read it.'"

     For you poets out there--and you who might write poetry one day--you might be interested in how Kenn Nesbitt's first book of poems came to be. He simply realized that he had a lot of poems and that perhaps they should get together in a book. 

     I don't know if getting published the first time was as simple as that for Nesbitt, but he found publishing doors opening after that. At age 51 with a lively expression on his photo, he appears to be young at heart. See one of his books in Jean's Easy-Shop Books,  Childhood to Teens section. If you need to pre-order or if copies are out, please let me know so I might help.