Jane Yolen: Seven Essential Things You Need To Know About Writing In Verse

Jane Yolen is an icon. She's known as the Hans Christian Anderson of America… Or, as she put it when someone asked her about it in the session, The Hans Jewish Anderson!

Jane Yolen leading her workshop

Jane shared...
advice and poems
poems and wisdom
wisdom and insight
insight and advice
advice and poems
Jane shared... and we were inspired.

She encouraged us to try different forms and spoke about the distinction between writing poetry for little ones, for 1st through 3rd graders and up through Young Adult.

Some moments that shone so brightly they need to be shared here:

"You must always read a poem aloud."

"Words are never too big for children as long as they are the right words."

and

"We poets are code-masters"

Explaining if you want to go further into a poem, you need to encode it (with references, innuendos, deeper meaning, etc…)

She shares tips of where to submit poetry, ideas for collections she won't do (and that maybe attendees might consider) and reads us poems by many other master poets, her own published work, and even some as-yet-unpublished poems she's written that felt like gifts - because we heard them before the rest of the world.

We even got the perfect gift on our chairs:

A poem.

Jane's workshop was essential, honest and inspiring!