One chilly morning at the New England SCBWI conference Padma Venkatraman met me with warmth and included me in her conversation because I was one of the few people of color in that room. Many years later, in 2024, I attended a Highlights Foundation retreat on Writing through Trauma and Grief to Empower Readers where she was guest faculty—this time we chatted over cups of tea and shared our love of poetry.
Today, I am excited to welcome Padma to Cynsations to talk about her new novel in verse, Safe Harbor (Penguin Random House, January 21, 2025). Safe Harbor is the story of an immigrant girl Geetha and her friend Miguel who together rescue an injured seal stranded on the beach.
A list of resources on marine ecology and conservation for readers and educators of Safe Harbor can be found at this central link.
In this hopeful story, there are many parallels between Santo the wounded seal, and Geetha the immigrant girl both struggling to survive in foreign surroundings. How did you decide to cast Geetha as the protagonist and a seal as a secondary character in this story? Do you have a personal tidbit that you may want to share with readers?
Safe Harbor was inspired by a walk I took on the beach in Rhode Island, when I, like the protagonist of Safe Harbor, came across a stranded seal.
Geetha is also similar to me in that she’s an immigrant to the United States whose parents are divorced, and she’s lonely because she’s bullied at school, and she takes refuge in music like I did. But when she strives to save the seal and the seal’s environment, her circle expands even as she becomes more centered—and she finds strength within her and in the love of new friends and realizes that familial bonds don’t dwindle with distance, just as I did when America morphed into home for me.
Beginning with the title Safe Harbor, the image system of the ocean that is layered through your entire book is exceptional. Could you share your process of developing setting and embedding details that evoke the ocean for the reader?
It’s funny, because I actually didn’t think consciously of layering it into the book—but of course, as many have pointed out, the title, which is reminiscent of the ocean invited an extended metaphor that resonates through the whole novel. Maybe when we allow a book to take whatever time it needs to develop, good things happen.
I guess the moral of the story is, “don’t rush to publish.” Safe Harbor will be released almost five years after Born Behind Bars (Penguin Random House, 2021).
I found these lines from your novel effective in conjuring up visual images while reading:
Page 38: “…but I know her moods can leap up and crash down like waves.”
Page 44: “…waves lap at the shore like hungry tongues.”
Page 84: “My bag keeps flapping in the wind as if it’s a gull that wants to take off.”
How do you invite in your poetic muse? What daily writing habits do you practice to develop this level of figurative language?
Poetry has always come naturally to me — my mom says I dictated poetry to her even before I could actually hold a pencil and write. Apparently I’d tell her “a poem has come to me” and make her write it down, complete with my line breaks! So again, it feels natural to me.
That said, I read a lot of books, including many novels in verse. I think reading is essential. When we read, we fill up the wellspring of our own creativity. My daily writing habit is reading!
Here are some reference books on poetry that may be of interest to writers of verse novels: Robert Lee Brewer’s The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms (Writers Digest, 2020); Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms (University of New Mexico Press, fifth edition 2020, first published 1968), Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook (HarperCollins, 1994), Robert Hass’s A Little Book on Form (HarperCollins, 2018).
I’d also strongly suggest checking out Thanku Poems of Gratitude (Lerner, 2019) a poetry anthology edited by Miranda Paul and the March 2021 issue of Poetry magazine, both of which feature diverse voices and highlight some of the best poets writing for young people today.
Individual poems in a verse novel act as chapters do in a prose novel, what would be your advice to beginning writers on using this structural framework for storytelling?
I think of individual poems in a verse novel as pearls on a string. The process of writing a verse novel is finding those pearls — those moments that are lustrous or rich with emotion — the parts of one’s story that merit the depth of a poem and then stringing those pearls on the plot line of story.
It’s a joy for me as a reader to discover surprise juxtaposition such as in this line from page 140: “…whip eggs until they foam like the ocean on a stormy day” —a perfect simile to depict the mood of this scene. What are your favorite techniques to use when composing verse novels, which poetic devices are uppermost in your writer’s toolbox and why?
The sound of a poem is important to me, and so when I edit, I read aloud and I edit keeping in mind all poetic devices associated with musicality. For example, in A Time to Dance (Penguin Random House, 2015), I felt the poems were imbued with the rhythms of Bharatanatyam.
In Safe Harbor, there’s a gentler rhythm, mimicking the sea and the surf. When I look back at my novels in verse, some of the tools that surface often are imagery, symbolism, and anaphora.
Any tips for tackling revisions on a verse novel?
Cut redundancy. Cut cliché. Not that any novel should have much of either, but a verse novel is so spare that we want to be especially careful in weeding those out.
While reading Safe Harbor I learned about various kinds of seals and seabirds, this novel integrates a wealth of information about the marine flora and fauna of Rhode Island, which is also your home state. What was your process of assimilating all this nonfiction information into a sparsely worded lyrical verse novel?
I’m a scientist, and an oceanographer. I find facts about the ocean lyrical. They provoke my awe — and awe is great inspiration for a poem.
How similar or dissimilar was the process of penning Safe Harbor when compared with your first verse novel?
Writing Safe Harbor was much easier than writing A Time to Dance. Doing something you love is easier the second time around!
Safe Harbor is your sixth book for children. You have maintained an active publishing career, a harder feat than breaking into the children’s-YA literature arena. Reflecting on your personal journey, could you tell us about how you have managed to achieve continued success?
It is a harder feat to keep going because this is an odd field, in which luck plays a huge role, and it’s not a meritocracy.
In my case, there’s an additional layer to staying in the field because I live with depression and anxiety and as an author, you have to stop worrying and learn to let go because you have no control over what happens with your work. A book is like this ship you work so hard to build, but then you have to let it sail on its own and just hope the weather will be good.
I grew up doing yoga and meditation. Like the mom in Safe Harbor who meditates and does yoga every morning, this is part of how I stay on even keel! And the mom is, by the way, a vital character in the novel, although she’s in the “best supporting actress” role.
Unfortunately, our field is still replete with stereotypical portrayals of parents who live with depression — every one I’ve met in the pages of a book is shown as “failing” in parental duties, which is damaging to your readers. I wanted to break that stereotype (while respectfully recognizing the seriousness of depression) and show a parent with depression who is managing it and is a positive presence in her child’s life.
Tell us about the genesis of Diverse Verse, and what you envision for this platform that you have been building over the last few years?
Thanks for asking. I founded Diverse Verse in an effort to call attention to the need to amplify and increase representation of historically marginalized voices in poetry.
We have a wealth of practical writing tips, lesson-plan suggestions and activity starters, and of course suggestions for reading on our website www.diverseverse.com which are already an incredibly resource for all teachers and writers of poetry in the English language.
I hope this resource will be recognized and will continue to grow, and I welcome anyone who would like to contribute, as a member or guest blogger, to reach out to me/us.
For you, what have been the stand-out changes in the world of children’s-YA writing and literature, since publishing your first book? What do you think of them and why?
People like me, and people before me like Cynthia Leitich Smith, and people before the two of us, have been working for diverse representation and greater equity in publishing for a long time.
We Need Diverse Books galvanized action when it came, and has done wonders.
However, unfortunately, we’re now facing a backlash. Born Behind Bars was challenged in Pinellas county, Fla.; The Bridge Home (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2019) was challenged at a school in Massachusetts; and I would be saddened but not shocked in Safe Harbor were banned because it shows two brown kids on the cover and speaks honestly about global warming.
Books are being banned in record numbers. We need to do everything we can to stem the rising tide of censorship.
You once said, “God to me is the power of Goodness as much as it is anything else.” Safe harbor continuously reminded me of the expansive nature surrounding us and how each small act of conservation, each selfless instance of putting other species before us humans, will impact future generations who will inherit this planet. What is the message you would like young readers to take away from this book?
I was the only BIPOC female in my incoming grad class — and although things are changing, BIPOC females are still quite a minority, especially in my specialties of chemical and physical oceanography.
I’ve noticed that most books with environmental themes that I’ve read feature white scientists — something I feel needs to change — and in my novel, the kids who actively spearhead the environmental change are BIPOC as are the scientists they meet.
And we see them begin with small steps to save our planet, as kids do in other books, but in Safe Harbor we also see them ponder the larger actions that we need to take — when they form an environmental club and brainstorm other things that they’d like to do to make larger impacts. I hope young readers take away a sense of hope and agency as well as the knowledge that they can take small as well as large actions to save our planet. Both count, and we need both, which the kids realize in Safe Harbor.
It was important to me in writing it that it was a climate focused novel that didn’t aggravate climate anxiety in readers. Safe Harbor also sends the message that we are there, as adults, to actively help and support – this fight is not something only the young are in. Adults are part of the problem and should be part of the solution!
Cynsations Notes
Padma Venkatraman was born in India and became an American after living in five countries and working as an oceanographer.
She also wrote Born Behind Bars (South Asia Book Award, Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People), The Bridge Home (Walter Award, Golden Kite Award, Global Read-Aloud), A Time to Dance (IBBY selection, ALA Notable), Island’s End (CCBC Choice, South Asia Book Award), and Climbing the Stairs (ALA/Amelia Bloomer List, Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People).
She lives in Rhode Island.
Mitu Malhotra holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the 2021 winner of the Katherine Paterson Prize for Literature for Young Adults and Children. Her short story Toxins is part of ELA curriculum.
In previous avatars, she was a textile and fashion designer. When she is not writing, Mitu paints, sews, and builds miniature dollhouses out of recycled materials. More on www.mitumalhotra.com. Follow her on Instagram @mituart or Bluesky @mitumalhotra.