Love Letters to Poetry | Tameka Fryer Brown on Poetry and Picture Books

We celebrate National Poetry Month with Tameka Fryer Brown who shares her thoughts on poetry and picture books with DiverseVerse member, Valerie Bolling.

1. What do you love about poetry, and why do you love writing in rhyme?

Poetry is evocative and efficient. It gets to the heart of a matter straightaway. I'm not a fluff fan. A great poem allows you to feel what its creator wants you to feel without distraction or dilution. It's a powerful means of expression.

And rhyming? Who doesn't love a good rhyme? They are sensory rich experiences for the reader, especially when used in conjunction with all kinds of other literary devices. Writing a rhyming picture book is like putting together a multi-layered puzzle. When you finish one successfully, you feel clever and accomplished.

2. What are the titles of your rhyming books? Tell us a bit about each one?

Around Our Way on Neighbors’ Day is about a young girl and her close-knit, multicultural community as they prepare to celebrate Neighbors' Day. Inspired by my love of music, its meter has a refrain-verse-refrain structure. Brown Baby Lullaby is a more tightly metered book, and it is my love letter to brown-skinned babies everywhere. Around Our Way and Brown Baby Lullaby are technically my only two rhyming books.

However, My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood and Twelve Dinging Doorbells have also been considered to be rhyming books by some. Mood is actually a spoken word-style free verse poem that generously uses internal rhyme, and Twelve Dinging Doorbells is patterned after The Twelve Days of Christmas, which isn't really a rhyming poem either. But since the latter two are often listed as rhyming books...

My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood is a book about emotions that the main character, Jamie, expresses through the metaphor of color. Twelve Dinging Doorbells is a humorous ode to Black family gatherings.

3. What are your favorite poetic or rhyming picture books?

Current titles I love include You So Black by Theresa tha S.O.N.G.B.I.R.D. and London Ladd; and Jump In! by Shadra Strickland. A way-back book that my kids and I used to love reading together is Bein’ With You This Way by W.Nikola-Lisa and Michael Bryant. Only recently have I realized how much of an influence it has had on me as a writer.

“A great poem allows you to feel what its creator wants you to feel without distraction or dilution.” —Tameka Fryer Brown

Tameka Fryer Brown is a picture book author who writes to sow seeds of self-love, pride, connectivity, and inclusion in the hearts of children. Her books Brown Baby Lullaby, My Cold Plum Lemon Pie Bluesy Mood, and Around Our Way on Neighbors’ Day have won awards like the Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award and the Anna Dewdney Read Together Award, and have been honored on best book lists by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, New York Public Library, Bank Street College, NPR, Parents Latina Magazine, The Little Free Library, and more. Tameka’s latest star-reviewed picture books include Twelve Dinging Doorbells, Not Done Yet: Shirley Chisholm’s Fight for Change, and That Flag.