A Blast with Janet Wong

I took my handy dandy FlipCam with me to the 8th annual ALSC Poetry Blast and made short one minute (more or less) movies of the poets reading their works to share with you. Next: Janet Wong.

Here's the short, lovely intro written and presented by host and poet Marilyn Singer and used with permission.

Janet Wong reveals: “Something that not everyone knows is that I used to hate poetry. Actually, in fourth grade I really hated poetry. And I don't think it was because I knew poetry. I think it was because I hated having to memorize poems. I have a terrible memory... I also hated having to read poems and pick them apart, analyze them, try to find the right answer. That really, really bothered me. And so I thought I hated poetry, but I think what I hated was poetry homework.” 



The good news is that Janet Wong changed her mind about poetry.

A former lawyer, she gave up a lucrative career as Director of Labor Relations at Universal Studios Hollywood to become a full-time children’s writer. Her poems and stories have been featured in print as well as some unusual venues such as during a car-talk radio show and on 5,000 subway and bus posters as part of the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority's "Poetry in Motion" program. In April 2003, Janet was one of five children’s authors invited to read at The White House Easter Egg Roll. She has also served on the Commission on Literature of the National Council of Teachers of English.


Her books have won numerous awards such as the Stone Center Recognition of Merit, Claremont Graduate School for both A Suitcase of Seaweed and Other Poems, and Good Luck Gold and Other Poems, which in, 1998, also received the International Reading Association's Celebrate Literacy Award, Foothill Reading Council. Along with Sylvia Vardell, Janet has recently embarked on a new venture, editing and producing PoetryTagTime, an e-book anthology.



Janet reads her poem, "Scutes," from PoetryTagTime here.





Image credit: 

Sylvia Vardell

Posting by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2011. All rights reserved.