The BALLPOINT PENGUINS, black and white, Do little else but write and write. Although they've nothing much to say, They write and write it anyway.

I'm mostly influenced by life, what's around me, and my own childhood.

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

I invented animals and birds - I had about two dozen. After working on them for six months, I sat down and just for fun wrote two dozen poems to accompany the drawings. It was for no one to every see, but a friend sent me in to an editor.