Young Writers Project is a creative, online community of teen writers and visual artists that started in Burlington in 2006. Each week, VTDigger publishes the writing and art of young Vermonters who post their work on youngwritersproject.org, a free, interactive website for youth, ages 13-19. To find out more, please go to youngwritersproject.org or contact Executive Director Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org; (802) 324-9538.
To live in the moment — to use our senses to ingest our surroundings and find an appreciation for every small felicity, in spite of our challenges — can be, for many, the only worthy purpose of life. For others, fulfillment is found in the promise of posterity. And for a third type, such as this week’s featured writer, Oliver Ellis of Belmont, happiness comes from straddling the two worlds: Experiencing new emotions, discovering new convictions through the process of committing them to the eternal page.
A young poet’s manifesto
Oliver Ellis, 14, Belmont
Anyone
can be a poet.
Anyone
can use their gift.
Anyone
can take a handful of words
and make someone laugh with them.
The pen is my trigger,
the words my recipe –
for tears,
for smiles,
for love,
and
for hate too.
A pen is a search engine
without a filter,
and somehow it seems to know
what your weak spots are.
And every day – every single day –
I pick up that pen and write. I write all the time, because
someday there will be nothing left.
I use my words as an
excuse.
An alibi.
It’s who I am.
A conscientious
objector to
conforming
and
being just like
everyone else.
I think we need more words. Because at the end of the day, what else will be left? Not our silly paper money, that’s for sure. Not our fancy cars, not our mansions. Not our strict laws or closed-minded biases.
But I have a notion that our words and our emotions will always be, as a reminder of what’s at stake in this world: nothing and everything.
