Sally Valentine: Poet Interview
2014 April PAD Challenge countdown: 5. We’re getting so very close to the beginning of this year’s challenge. I hope your pencils are sharpened, your paper is uncrumpled, and your…
2014 April PAD Challenge countdown: 5. We're getting so very close to the beginning of this year's challenge. I hope your pencils are sharpened, your paper is uncrumpled, and your mind is open to the world around you--or something like that (I have 5 kids; so I know it's not always that idyllic).
Sally Valentine is a native of Rochester, NY. After teaching math for 25 years in the Rochester City School District, she is now off on a tangent of writing. Her love for kids, books, and Rochester led her to write a series of novels for intermediate grade kids which are each set in a different Rochester landmark. Her latest work is There Are No Buffalo in Buffalo, a collection of poetry for kids. Each poem is about a different place in New York State. This collection just won first prize in the Middle-Grade/Young Adult Books category of the Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards. When not writing, she can be found reading, solving puzzles of all kinds, or walking around beautiful western New York. She lives in Walworth, NY with her husband, Gary. Her grandchildren, Evan and Molly, are her newest source of inspiration.
Sally also included an aside to me, which I want to share with the group, "William Preston and I live in the same small town and belong to the same writer's group. He is just as kind and encouraging in person as he is online." What a great small town that must be!
Here's Sally's Top 25 poem:
Broke, by Sally Valentine
He wanted to break her
like his daddy broke horses.
Free reign at first, then tighter, tighter.
She wanted to break him,
of speeding cars, careless spending,
thoughts of other women.
Their break-up was inevitable.
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Who are your favorite poets?
My favorite poets are e.e. cummings and Billy Collins.
As a reader, what do you like in poems?
I like poems with simple words that make me see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
What was your goal for the 2013 April PAD Challenge?
My number one goal for the 2013 PAD Challenge was to finish with 30 poems. Secondly, I hoped that I'd be able to use some of them to start a new collection for kids about the 20th century. I was very pleased to have six that fit that category.
What's next for you?
What's next for me is adding more poems to that collection. I want to have one poem for each year.
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Workshop your poetry!
Beginning in May, poets will have the opportunity to put their poems through a workshop environment with an online mentor.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer's Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World's Problems. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
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Find more poetic posts here:
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
