Throughout my whole life, I’ve always been surrounded by poetry. From my youngest years, my mom would play songs by Luis Eduardo Aute, or Silvio Rodriguez. She would tell me epic poems from greek mythology, beautiful legends from our own culture, and more. I was always surrounded by beautiful language and beautiful songs. So, it was no wonder that I grew up to write poetry.

As someone who has long kept diaries, I think that writing is just a way for me to understand myself better- it’s therapeutic, it’s calming, it’s healing. This is not to say that I’m particularly great at writing, I definitely think that I have a long way to go in many aspects, but that’s the beauty in art- a lot of the time, we are all just searching for a way to express ourselves, and it’s all, ultimately, subjective. Writing helps me understand not just myself, but also my relationship to the world, primarily the natural world. I often feel things in a big way, and deeply, too, and I think this comes out in my writing. I begin to see everything as beautiful, tragic, magical; the mundanity of things leaves them, and everything becomes something to behold.

I think that in my last few years of high school, and then in my first year of college, I lost that sense of appreciation for life. I was so overwhelmed with school work, and life changes that I muted everything out. It wasn’t until my second semester of freshman year, when I was taking only 13 credits, that I had more time for myself, and began to write again. This sort of snowballed at that time, and suddenly I was writing about everything again. These poems weren’t good ones, and many didn’t even make it to a paper or a notes app, but everything started feeling romantic and beautiful again.

In my sophomore spring, I took a class with Margara Rusotto, Escritura Creativa. It was a class with graduate students, which really intimidated me, but I stuck to it, and it was one of the best classes I’ve taken thus far in my college career. Finally, I was receiving feedback on my work- and I started to feel positively about my writing, that maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, and this was my chance to improve. Furthermore, I was able to practice my creative writing in Spanish, something I had never done before. Writing in the language that Luis Eduardo Aute sang to me my entire childhood felt magical, and full circle. Ever since that semester, I’ve written way more poems, and subsequently enjoyed life more. Thanks to Luis Marentes, I even got the chance to appear on a podcast, reading some of my poems, in both English and Spanish (linked here), which was a wonderful experience, and not something I would’ve ever expected myself to do.

I encourage everyone to play with language, and practice appreciation of the world around them more. Even if the poem isn’t beautiful, or has a beautiful topic, it can be surprisingly healing. Remember there is no “right” way to do art, and express yo=urself to the best of your abilities- that’s what matters most