Author Interview

An Interview With Children’s Poet Charles Ghigna, A.K.A. Father Goose

Charles Ghigna has written thousands of poems for children over the course of his career, earning him the beloved nickname Father Goose. It is clear that he loves writing for kids as much as kids enjoy reading his work!

I caught up with Father Goose during quarantine, where he was working in his treehouse at the top of an English Tudor Cottage in Alabama.

Q: Have you always wanted to be a poet? What inspired you to write poetry when you first started? How has your work evolved over the years?

A: I never really thought about being a poet. I started writing poems in school — and never stopped. I started keeping a daily writing journal. My entries usually turned into poems. I’ve always enjoyed playing with language. Poems always seemed to be just the right little package of words to say what I want to say.

Like the drivel of many young writers, my early poems were self-conscious and full of teen angst. I continued writing lots of serious poems in college. Some were published in literary magazines and collected in books published by university presses. I moved here to Alabama from Florida State University in the 1970s. My very first Alabama poem was published in Harper’s Magazine. That inspired a…