[Y]oung Writers Project, an independent nonprofit based in Burlington, engages young people to write and use digital media to express themselves with clarity and power, and to gain confidence and skills for school, the workplace and life.
Check out the most recent issue of The Voice, Young Writers Project’s monthly digital magazine. Click here.
Each week, VTDigger features a writing submission – an essay, poem, fiction or nonfiction – accompanied by a photo or illustration from Young Writers Project.
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in newspapers across Vermont, on Vermont Public Radio and in YWP’s monthly digital magazine, The Voice. Since 2006, it has offered young people a place to write, share their photos, art, audio and video, and to explore and connect online at youngwritersproject.org. For more information, please contact Susan Reid at sreid@youngwritersproject.org.
Kelly Daigle’s title “Dying World” is an accurate representation of her poem’s subject matter. Rather than focusing on one issue faced by future generations – and her generation – she points her finger at them all: climate change, the current US political climate, endangered species, even Barbie. While the audience may be left without a solution, Daigle’s quick-paced, pleading tone throughout is more than enough to impress the necessity for change.
Dying World
By Kelly Daigle
[T]he world is dying,
the people are crying,
as if they weren’t the ones
who held the guns.
Put that oil in the water,
atmosphere getting hotter.
Millions of trees hit the ground,
it’s a world-wide nervous breakdown.
All we care about is a selfie,
who looks the most like Barbie.
Whose teeth are whiter,
whose dress is tighter?
Just say it will be fine.
Pretend we aren’t running out of time.
Watch your TV and drink your espresso,
kill the polar bears but feed your calico.
Don’t think about the guy
who went overseas to die,
gave his life so you could be alive
to type your documents on Google Drive.
No, you can’t come to America.
Why not? You might have Zika!
No, it’s really because you aren’t white.
Trump says that means you’re dynamite.
Grab a woman and build a wall,
he thinks he has it all.
Don’t let go of a handshake,
never let the worker have a break.
Now we have a nuclear war.
Is that really what we stand for?
Who will give everything,
and who will walk away king?
The world is dying,
battles intensifying.
It might be too late to save.
We might as well start to dig our grave.
