Project Description: In humanities we started a poetry project, the guidelines she gave us was to write a poem about something you deeply care about and how it sends a message. I decided to write my poem about my childhood and how it impacted the way I grew up. Once we had our poems written, we had to choose what exactly we wanted to do with our poems at exhibition, there was the option to do an art piece, spoken word, video/online piece. I chose to do an art piece, I did a collage on a piece of wood that was able to spin because it connects to the message of my poem.
Poem & Artist Statement:
So Much Has Changed
My skin glistening in the sun, hot as an oven, looking down at the water, I see myself in clear blue reflection. I can’t help but jump in.
Gasping for air, frozen by the chill of the water. “Towel, towel,” “Chatter, chatter,” I shiver as the cold breeze whips against my skin, infecting me with goosebumps.
At ten I lived for nights with friends, at home a cell phone rang calling for my comfort. A hug so tight, reminds me that everything was alright.
Dreaming of the days I get to travel the world, and go to bed late.
Desiring the days for responsibility, choosing my bedtime, and creating my own fascination.
The belief in Santa and the tooth fairy, the magic of her taking my teeth, so far beyond my imagination.
Creating a family with baby dolls, begging my sister to play house, and longing for the day I have my own family.
I was raised by the lake, mom's arms were warmer than the sun, a cold tap on my arm, I look over, a warmth fills my heart, big cuddles…
Swoop, so much has changed, but somehow everything is the same. Life goes on and on, spinning, but no one is ever winning.
Artist Statement: When I first started brainstorming ideas for my poem, I started with things I feel very strongly about. For example, I hate drugs, bullying, drunk driving, and violence, while family and schooling are important to me.
After brainstorming all these ideas, I realized I wouldn’t be able to write a poem with a personal connection to any of these. I decided to write my poem about my childhood, my relationship with my family, and how I have changed since I was little. My biggest inspiration for my poem was the support my parents have given me as I’ve grown up and how open-minded they have been about everything in my life. My poem is mostly about my love for my family and my love for the lake. The biggest reason that my Mom was my main inspiration is because we have been really close since I was born. When my family and I go to the lake for the weekend I think of it as family time, we all love the lake so it makes it even better when we are all together. My Sister and I grew up listening to the Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones, we grew up in the water, and we grew up traveling. My Dad along with my Sister, are always the loudest people in the room, and then there's my Mom and me. We are the quiet ones that like to socialize for about 10 minutes, and then we just want to watch a show and chill. When I started writing my poem, I really struggled with the beginning. I really enjoyed writing the poems about who/what we were raised by so I thought it would help me to incorporate some of that poem into my final one.
I decided to do my poem in free verse because I thought it would make more sense to me. I really struggle when having to follow specific guidelines while writing so the free verse came a lot easier to me. The whole time I was writing my poem I kept telling myself to add more poetic devices, and every time I would revise, that’s the one thing I couldn't do. When I got to the final stanza I finally added in some rhyming which I was really proud of. Before I added the rhyming, I had some accidental metaphors and similes, but they really contributed to the flow of the poem. I don’t have a specific symbol in my poem, the only thing I am trying to symbolize is family and how important it is. I really wanted to try and add some more complex poetic devices instead of just using the simple ones, but I really struggled with understanding how to incorporate those into my theme. I wanted my poem to have a nice flow to it, so when it is read it doesn’t sound choppy. Another thing I kept in mind while writing is the wording I used, since my poem is mainly about my childhood and the way I grew up, I wanted to use wording that made me feel like I was in my childhood once again. “I was raised by the lake, Mom's arms were warmer than the sun,” this quote shows some example of how I used simple wording that makes sense that I am in my childhood again.
Growth as a Poet Reflection:
When I first started thinking about what to write my poem about, I started by writing a list of all the things I am passionate about. The list came down to my hate for drugs, and bullying, my love for my family, self-confidence, and body positivity. I decided to go down the family route and how I grew up, I thought this would be really great to write about because I was going to have to create an art piece and an art piece about my childhood would not be hard. Before we had started writing our final poems, we had done a few to practice before that. I wrote a poem about a specific age, and I really liked it so I decided to incorporate ideas from it into my final poem. One of the ideas I incorporated into it was, “At ten I lived for sleepovers. Traveling was always fun, I longed to go to bed late.” This stanza was not very good, I didn’t go into depth at all, it had very little detail in it. I asked Lori what I could do to make it better and she said to add specifics and more detail. This stanza was greatly improved, it turned out to be, “ At ten I lived for nights with friends, at home a cell phone rang calling for my comfort. A hug so tight reminds me that everything was alright.” I really liked the way this stanza turned out because it included so much more detail, and it was so much more accurate.
One of the most important changes I made is in the first stanza of my first draft I said, “I see my own reflection.” I don’t really like the way this sounds, it sounds very choppy and bleh, I am really glad I decided to change this line because it is now way better. I changed this line to, “I see myself in clear blue reflection.” This just makes more sense to me as a poet, especially considering what the rest of my stanza says. When I said “I see my own reflection,” it was kind of just cliche and not interesting, but when I changed it, it made me want to keep writing and others want to keep reading. I think this change improves my poem because it makes the line more in-depth, before, I was kind of just saying stuff, now when the reader reads, they can imagine me seeing myself in the clear blue reflection.
In the second stanza, I made two really important changes. The first one I said, “Gasping for air, shocked at the chill of the water.” I thought this was really good until I got peer critiqued, my group told me to make this line more interesting and deep. I asked if they had any ideas to change it to, Julian gave me the idea to say something about being frozen because the water was cold. I changed this line to, “Gasping for air, frozen by the chill of the water.” This was not a big change at all, but I think it really made a difference. I think this improves my poem because again it gives you a better understanding of what I am feeling in that moment and makes the reader be able to imagine it. The second change I made in this stanza was I had this line as, “giving me goosebumps.” Again, this is kind of blah, this wasn’t giving me what I needed at the end of this stanza. In my critique group, someone else gave me the idea to say something about getting infected with goosebumps or using something more creative to say that. I ended up changing it to, “infecting me with goosebumps.” This improved my poem for the same reason before, this just made it more interesting and more imaginative.
The last important change I made was a big one, this made a huge difference in my poem and artwork. When I was going to get critiqued, I thought that I had finished and my poem was done. When I thought I was done this was my ending stanza, “I was raised by the lake, mom's arms were warmer than the sun, a cold tap on my arm, I look over, a warmth fills my heart, big cuddles…” This never felt finished to me, but I just wanted to be done with it, and I had no idea what I was going to do for my art project. The day I was getting critiqued, I quickly wrote a better last stanza that would sum up the poem a little better and give me an idea of what to do for my art piece. I ended up with, “Swoop, so much has changed, but somehow everything is the same. Life goes on and on, spinning, but no one is ever winning.” I really liked how this last stanza turned out, it made it a lot better and actually made it seem like the ending. After I showed this to Lori and told her that I wanted to do a collage for my art piece, she gave me the idea to have the collage be able to spin to incorporate the last stanza. Then I made a collage that could spin and it greatly represents my poem.