Douglas Florian has spent most of his life in New York City, where he was born.

He studied art at Queens College and the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Here's how Douglas says he got started writing poetry:

One day at the flea market I bought a book of poems called Oh, That's Ridiculous, edited by William Cole. The poems in that book were so funny that I was inspired to write some of my own. A few earlier poems wound up in my book Monster Motel, and others in Bing Bang Boing.

With Beast Feast I began a series of books (also including On the Wing, In the Swim, Insectlopedia, and Mammalabilia) with animal poems and paintings. I used watercolor paintings to illustrate these books. In Insectlopedia I primed brown bags with white gesso, then painted insects on those bags with watercolors, using a very fine sable brush.

Afterward I cut and pasted and flipped and flopped pieces of those pictures and added medieval lettering. I love to give a shape to a poem if it makes sense. My poem about a sawfish is in the shape of a saw. My inchworm poem arches like an inchworm. And my poem about salmon swims up the page like salmon swim upstream. I sometimes make up words to improve a poem. So when a walrus is splattered by the saltwater of the sea, it gets walrusty. A caterpillar that eats a lot is a faterpillar. And a baby kangaroo sleeps in her kangaroom.

There's only one rule I follow when writing poems: There are no rules. Poetry Rules!

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