What do you think?
Rate this book
Inside Out
Just how do poets come up with their ideas? Do their ideas come to them in a flash of inspiration or do they slave away for months or years? Edited by Canadian poet JonArno Lawson, this is an illustrated poetry book with a difference. A selection of verse from top contemporary poets - including Children's Laureate Michael Rosen, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Roger McGough and many more, including writers from the USA, India, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - are then annotated by the poets themselves, who explain how they arrived at the finished poem.
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
26 people want to read
About the author
JonArno Lawson
26 books56 followersJonArno is the author of two books of poetry for adults, Love is an Observant Traveller and Inklings, as well as a contributor for The Chechens: A Handbook. The Man in the Moon-Fixer's Mask is his first book for children. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and two children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 18, 2008
Recently a couple children’s literary bloggers decided to celebrate all things Canadian in a grand showing of literature born via our neighbor to the north. At the time I decided to celebrate graphic novelist Kean Soo and I do not regret the choice. Yet thinking back on it, if I’d had another chance, I might have also picked out a poet by the name of JonArno Lawson. Mr. Lawson is one of those children’s poets that works in a quietly beautiful way. His poems tend to be small delicate things. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of perusing his The Man in the Moon-Fixer’s Mask will know what I’m talking about. I knew he could write verse. What I didn’t know was that he could also cajole a group of 23 other poets into pinpointing exactly why it is they write the poems they do. In Inside Out, Lawson has poets as familiar as Jack Prelutsky or as unfamiliar to Americans like myself as Souvankham Thammavongsa submit one poem and then explain why they wrote it or how it came into being. The result is a brilliant cross-section of style, levels, and reasons why people write poetry for children and what both they and their audiences get out of the experience.
In his Preface, Jonarno Lawson asks, “How does a poem work? No one seems to know, really, but in the commentaries, some very interesting insights into the making of certain poems are offered by those who wrote them.” How better to answer the question of what makes a poem work then to get the poets themselves to fess up? The variation is the really the lure of the entire enterprise. Some authors indulge in lengthy explanations and stories. Others are tight-lipped and succinct. Carol Ann Duffy’s explanation is less than two paragraphs while Sally Farrell Odgers prefers to use three pages. Many draw on interesting family stories while others delve into far more personal territory. That isn't to say that Lawson’s request for poems and explanations meant that there wasn't also a surprising amount of repetition though. I found it kind of cool that Philip Devos mentioned his poem’s “s” and “sh” sounds “which suggest the sound of water splashing”, while Jackie Kay mentioned her poem’s, “ ‘ssss’ sound, snake sound.” And then later Naomi Shihab Nye says that the ‘s’s’ in her poem, “create the hissing tide or sleep washing up on two kids in bed who don’t really want to go to sleep yet.” My favorite moments were when the authors would bring up aspects of sentences and sounds that you wouldn’t normally think of unless your occupation was of the poetic persuasion. Mr. Lawson himself discusses his poem “The Octopus and the Seahorse” and then says of the term “aquatic quasi-equestrian” that it contains the rare “kw” sound not once, not twice, but three times.
The look of the entire book reminded me of nothing so much as a good old-fashioned zine. Remember those packets of poems and pen lines teens used to put out before the internet took over their lives? The design of this particular book alternates between white pages with blue illustration and poems in black text and blue pages with white typed words explaining why they wrote this or that. On top of all this, Lawson has illustrated around the poems in a freehand style that, in a way, reminded me of Calef Brown’s work. At first it struck me as a kind of drawn stream of consciousness, but after a while I picked up on the fact that the pictures would sometimes contain information that you’d read in the author’s explanation of the poem.
Everyone will have their favorite poems in this collection, I suppose. Mine was “Colours Crackle, Colours Roar,” by Pat Mora. Her attempt in the poem is to give colors tangible descriptions. Things like “Black crackles like noisy grackles,” and “Verde rustles leaf-secrets, swish, swish.” That’s great stuff. This book is particularly ideal for anyone teaching a class of kids or teens about poetry. The explanations that come with the poems are always interesting, and if the kids don’t like one then they can look about and find another that’s more their style. You could easily turn this into an assignment where a kid takes a poem of their own and explains why they wrote it and what inspired them. All in all, this is just a wonderful collection. Great, grand stuff.
Ages 10 and up.
In his Preface, Jonarno Lawson asks, “How does a poem work? No one seems to know, really, but in the commentaries, some very interesting insights into the making of certain poems are offered by those who wrote them.” How better to answer the question of what makes a poem work then to get the poets themselves to fess up? The variation is the really the lure of the entire enterprise. Some authors indulge in lengthy explanations and stories. Others are tight-lipped and succinct. Carol Ann Duffy’s explanation is less than two paragraphs while Sally Farrell Odgers prefers to use three pages. Many draw on interesting family stories while others delve into far more personal territory. That isn't to say that Lawson’s request for poems and explanations meant that there wasn't also a surprising amount of repetition though. I found it kind of cool that Philip Devos mentioned his poem’s “s” and “sh” sounds “which suggest the sound of water splashing”, while Jackie Kay mentioned her poem’s, “ ‘ssss’ sound, snake sound.” And then later Naomi Shihab Nye says that the ‘s’s’ in her poem, “create the hissing tide or sleep washing up on two kids in bed who don’t really want to go to sleep yet.” My favorite moments were when the authors would bring up aspects of sentences and sounds that you wouldn’t normally think of unless your occupation was of the poetic persuasion. Mr. Lawson himself discusses his poem “The Octopus and the Seahorse” and then says of the term “aquatic quasi-equestrian” that it contains the rare “kw” sound not once, not twice, but three times.
The look of the entire book reminded me of nothing so much as a good old-fashioned zine. Remember those packets of poems and pen lines teens used to put out before the internet took over their lives? The design of this particular book alternates between white pages with blue illustration and poems in black text and blue pages with white typed words explaining why they wrote this or that. On top of all this, Lawson has illustrated around the poems in a freehand style that, in a way, reminded me of Calef Brown’s work. At first it struck me as a kind of drawn stream of consciousness, but after a while I picked up on the fact that the pictures would sometimes contain information that you’d read in the author’s explanation of the poem.
Everyone will have their favorite poems in this collection, I suppose. Mine was “Colours Crackle, Colours Roar,” by Pat Mora. Her attempt in the poem is to give colors tangible descriptions. Things like “Black crackles like noisy grackles,” and “Verde rustles leaf-secrets, swish, swish.” That’s great stuff. This book is particularly ideal for anyone teaching a class of kids or teens about poetry. The explanations that come with the poems are always interesting, and if the kids don’t like one then they can look about and find another that’s more their style. You could easily turn this into an assignment where a kid takes a poem of their own and explains why they wrote it and what inspired them. All in all, this is just a wonderful collection. Great, grand stuff.
Ages 10 and up.
April 7, 2008
The terrific JonArno Lawson has put together a completely charming book, INSIDE OUT: CHILDREN’S POETS DISCUSS THEIR WORK. Delightfully illustrated, this small book (just right for fitting in a hand) contains twenty-four marvelous poems. Each is accompanied by a commentary by its creator and these are fascinating and delightful, invariably as poetic and quirky as the poems themselves. The poets included are John Agard, Carol Ann Duffy, Philip de Vos, Jackie Kay, X.J. Kennedy, JoArno Lawson (and if you don’t know his other award-winning books of children’s poetry go find them now!), Dennis Lee, Margaret Mahy, Adrien Mitchell, Roger McGough, Stephen Mitchell, Pat Mora, Grace Nichols, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sally Farrell Odgers, Jack Prelutsky, Annushka Ravishankar, Christopher Reid, Michael Rosen, Jeanne Steig, Matthew Sweeney, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Richard Wilbur, and Nancy Willard.
Highly, highly, highly recommended.
Highly, highly, highly recommended.
October 8, 2023
It's always a pleasure to learn how writers write certain pieces, particularly when it comes to children's poetry.
Inside Out shares some striking verses from twenty-four poets along with personal insight into their own work. The poets hail from all over the world, a few known to me but most not.
Of course, such variety leads to some favourites, some middling efforts and a few poems that left me feeling indifferent. Such has been my overall experience with children's verse. Nonsense is important but it has to come from the right place, otherwise it runs the risk of appearing patronising.
Not only this, I think some of the featured writers put a lot more passion into their commentary than others. The one I found most interesting involved a writer translating their work into English and how maintaining the rhyme, rhythm and shape of the poem changed the approach to the subject matter. Meanwhile a couple of poets didn't seem to engage much with their specific process, preferring instead to justify overarching creative choices or to avoid spoiling the magic of their own imagination.
In any case, I would say Inside Out does a marvellous job of showing how multifaceted the process of writing poetry can be and how aware some writers are of their craft. As such I recommend Inside Out to poetry enthusiasts wanting to learn what makes popular children's verse tick.
Notable Poems
• Aquarium by Philip De Vos - the aforementioned poem in translation: deceptively simple.
• The Stincher by Jackie Kay - a verse with dark depth and a refreshingly frank commentary.
• Skip Don't Trip by Christopher Reid - a short, sharp poem brimming with energy and speed.
Inside Out shares some striking verses from twenty-four poets along with personal insight into their own work. The poets hail from all over the world, a few known to me but most not.
Of course, such variety leads to some favourites, some middling efforts and a few poems that left me feeling indifferent. Such has been my overall experience with children's verse. Nonsense is important but it has to come from the right place, otherwise it runs the risk of appearing patronising.
Not only this, I think some of the featured writers put a lot more passion into their commentary than others. The one I found most interesting involved a writer translating their work into English and how maintaining the rhyme, rhythm and shape of the poem changed the approach to the subject matter. Meanwhile a couple of poets didn't seem to engage much with their specific process, preferring instead to justify overarching creative choices or to avoid spoiling the magic of their own imagination.
In any case, I would say Inside Out does a marvellous job of showing how multifaceted the process of writing poetry can be and how aware some writers are of their craft. As such I recommend Inside Out to poetry enthusiasts wanting to learn what makes popular children's verse tick.
Notable Poems
• Aquarium by Philip De Vos - the aforementioned poem in translation: deceptively simple.
• The Stincher by Jackie Kay - a verse with dark depth and a refreshingly frank commentary.
• Skip Don't Trip by Christopher Reid - a short, sharp poem brimming with energy and speed.
Want to read
September 6, 2015I'm not a huge fan of poetry, but this books about the process sounds interesting.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews