Departments : A Poetry Workshop in Print :
Juanita Havill
By Lee Bennett Hopkins
This author of 30+ books for children has finally set her sights on her longtime love of poetry
Digging in the dirt has yielded a bumper crop of poetry from author Juanita Havill.
In 1987, Juanita Havill received the second annual Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award for her picture book, Jamaica's Find (Houghton Mifflin, l986), featuring the lovable African American girl who has since become a staple in children's literature. After two decades in print, Jamaica's Find, now in paperback, is also available in a Spanish edition, El Hallazgo De Jamaica (Lectorum Publications, 1996).
In the garden
Juanita, born May 19, 1939, in Indiana, has written over 30 books for children. Yet her first book of poetry, I Heard It from Alice Zucchini: Poems About the Garden (Chronicle Books, 2005) appeared just last year. Through 20 wonderful poems reflecting on the various aspects of gardening, readers can find a monster in the garden who is "...standing in the dirt/in a pair of ragged jeans/and a yellow flannel shirt," engage in a counting rhymed "Pea Pod Chant" and enter a Rhubarb Forest and meet engaging characters such as Jill Celery, Sam Melon and, of course, Alice Zucchini.
"Although Zucchini is my first book of poetry, I have been writing poems since the age of four," Juanita says. "I wrote poetry in high school and published several poems in small press journals.
"The earliest poems in Zucchini date back to the l980s when our family lived in Minneapolis. I planted a garden in our backyard and spent the short summers tending it. Several of the poems in Zucchini were inspired by that garden. Tending another garden in the l990s, I was sparked to write other verses, all of which finally found their home!"
A state of wonder
About creating poems she told me, "I consciously struggle to make rhymes and rhythms fit my ideas or feelings. I scribble out more lines than I write. A day or two later when I'm walking the dog, ironing or pulling weeds, a poem falls into place. All I have to do is repeat the poem until I get to pen and paper to write it down."
Defining poetry she adds, "Poetry is my travel diary that shows I've been in a state of wonder."
One hopefully assumes a poetry bug bit her while working in one of her gardens so more verse will emerge from this multitalented author.
The mother of two grown children, Juanita Havill lives in Sonoita, AZ, with her husband.
Lee Bennett Hopkins is a distinguished poet and anthologist. A recent collection is Behind the Museum Door: Poems to Celebrate the Wonders of Museums (Abrams, 2007).
May, 2007, Vol.37, No.8
