A chat with Zaro Weil about her latest book, Polka Dot Poems
Hot off the press from CliPPA Award-winning poet Zaro Weil is Polka Dot Poems - 100 Weird and Wonderful Nature Haiku. It’s a gorgeous poetry primer for young children which is beautifully and playfully illustrated by Lucy Wynne. Within its pages you’ll find kittens, rainbows, the wind, pangolins, Venezuelan poodle moths, aye-ayes, puffins, platypuses, sun bears, mud puppies and more.
If you’re wondering how Zaro and Lucy came up with such a thing, read on… we caught up with Zaro in her home in France, sadly not in person but via the magic of digital media. We hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did!
Zaro, how did ‘Polka Dot Poems’ come about, and why a whole book of haiku?
When I first started reading haiku, this very special Japanese poetry form made me think of all kinds of remembered events I loved, like birthdays and celebrations and other special moments in time. I came to think of haiku as poignant little picture-perfect word gatherings with feelings attached.
Then one day, out of the blue, I decided to play a game with my mind and try to write ‘a hundred happy haiku’. I think I just liked the way those three words sounded together… h-h-h (and I love to think in titles!). Since I adore animals and nature, and since haiku are generally about natural things, this is how my book began.
At the same time, I have a rather silly liking for polka dots so I thought it might be fun to illustrate the book with lots of polka dots!
What was your experience of working on the book, did you have fun?
Oh, yes! But it was also a serious challenge. Haiku is short but it’s hard work thinking up how to describe, say, a bubble in just 17 syllables, and how to give each poem a nice ‘pop’ at the end. Because that’s what a haiku is meant to do: give you a little surprise thought or feeling at the finish. So I set off to write some very small poems that would capture the essence of some very big things... wind... sand... stars...sun....lions... Not easy!
At some early point my friend Judith Elliott (who was my first British publisher back in 1991) suggested including some creatures that kids may not know about - a lyrebird, a wombat, a platypus…. so I began researching every weird and curious creature I could find.
When we came close to the end, we changed the title from 100 Happy Haiku to Polka Dot Poems because our illustrator, Lucy Wynne, was practically channeling polka dots and making sure that trees and rivers and everything else was really and truly made up of crazy polka dots!
What do you enjoy about writing poetry?
Constructing a poem is like making up my very own mind puzzle and then trying to figure out the answer. What I choose to write about and how is determined by what I’m thinking about and how I’m feeling at any one time. Until I start writing I often don't have a clue what’s really churning away inside my head and heart.
Of course we all have lots of different thoughts all day, every day. But to get beyond the surface, to explore our secret and hidden misty moonlight ideas and to open ourselves to connect somehow to the bigger universe in some unknown way... that’s something I’m drawn to through writing poems.
Plus (and this is a big plus!) I love words. Certain words just sound so wonderful together, like they were made for one another. I love the way certain groups of words, metaphors for example, hold symbolic meanings and so you have to root around in your mind to capture those unusual ideas, those creative comparisons.
I believe the act of writing is an act of magic. Like a rabbit popping out of a hat: the rabbit is a poem and the hat is our head. It’s all very exciting!
Do you like working with illustrators?
Absolutely! One of my favourite things in the world is working with designers, illustrators and artists. I guess it’s because I learn so much from them. When I’m working with an illustrator on a book we discuss concepts and meanings and feelings and ideas. Seeing my ideas through the lens of others who work in other art forms is so useful and inspiring.
You used to work in children’s theatre, how has this informed your writing?
In 1973 I set up Metro Theatre Company with my friend Lynn Rubright in the United States. It was a huge part of my life and it informs everything I’ve done since. Thanks to Metro, I always write with my inner child alive and kicking inside me. In every piece we performed over the 10 years that I was with Metro, we never forgot the child. We metaphorically became the child, in show after show, day after day. And every time, we knew instantly if we were getting it right or not. We understood that if the audience wiggled or chatted or stared out of the windows, something was wrong with the piece or our performance - not with the child. So we worked very hard to discover the particular energy needed to engage every child in every aspect of the performance. Now I try to apply that page by page in my poetry.
The other big thing that Metro taught me is never to ‘dumb down’ what you're doing for children. Metro celebrated the emotional intelligence of children, and in my writing I aim to do the same. Kids get it. If you present things well, appropriately and with energy and rhythm and joy and compassion and clarity and, dare I say, love, then kids get it.
And we should never be afraid to stretch young people to discover new parts of themselves through art. And by the way, that also goes for us adults too!
We couldn’t agree more, Zaro. Here at Troika we firmly believe that children deserve to be respected, inspired, nurtured and stimulated by great books. Speaking of which… here’s a taster of Polka Dot Poems, which has just been chosen as a National Poetry Day 2021 Selection.