Poetry Breaks; Poetry Breaks for Schools and Libraries: Lucille Clifton

I. Remember first starting to write when I was about 10 11 or 12. Now I didn't know I could be a poet. I didn't know that I could be a writer. Not the writers not like the writers that I saw in school because I've said this many times in speeches. The only writers and the only poets that I ever saw in the public schools of Buffalo New York were portraits on the walls they were all dead white men from New England with beards and none of that seemed to relate to me. But that had something to do with publishing. I started writing when I was very young I loved to read I come from a family of people who love to read though neither of my parents ever graduated from elementary school. But we had books around the house and I learned to feel something respect and wonder and love for language and how it works and especially for the oral tradition out of which I write I think and I've been writing ever since. By the time my first book was published I had been writing for over 20 years and with serious intent which doesn't mean intending to be published it means intending to try to do it well.