[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.
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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 Anna Forsythe at anna@youngwritersproject.org.
Rebecca Orten’s “Simplicity” does not address any one specific event or emotion. It is instead a brief reflection on a conversation between friends about the day’s happenings. Without directly stating so, the narrator expresses an appreciation for this small, seemingly mundane moment at the cafeteria lunch table.
Simplicity
By Rebecca Orten
[I] sit
at the sunny cafeteria table
eating a peanut butter and jelly while
listening to my friends discuss
politics, Anthony Ramos’s album,
our new English assignment.
Our proximity
makes it possible to hear one another
over the dull roar of student chatter.
They go over
our president’s latest stupid Tweet,
the school dance, their classes.
I do not speak much,
just eat my sandwich and listen.
They learn about
politics, Anthony Ramos’s album
our new English assignment,
our president’s latest stupid Tweet,
the school dance, their classes.
I learn about them.
