KIDS/PARENTING: Susan Marie Swanson, children’s author and poet
An excerpt:
JEAN: Why do you feel poetry is important for children?
SUSAN MARIE: Poetry is part of our cultural legacy. Like visual art, storytelling, music, dance, theater, and other arts, poetry belongs to everyone. Poetry welcomes and challenges us with its rhythms, sounds, and patterns. Reading poems, we can imagine and explore different ways of thinking, feeling, and experiencing the world. Poetry maps the territory of the human heart.
JEAN: Do you have any tips you can share with those of us who are interested in encouraging our children to explore poetry as an art form?
SUSAN MARIE: Invite young children to tell you things and to play with words. Write stuff down for them, without worrying about whether it is a story or a poem or a report or something else. But be open to the thought that their words could be poems.
Read the entire interview here.
Tags: art, children, kids, parenting, poetry, The Artful Parent
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