Young 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.
New year, new you? That means no more nail-biting for some, and for others, a recommitment to hobbies and passion projects. This week’s featured writer, Grace Batsie of Jericho, offers us an affecting poem about wasted talent, yet its purpose is a positive one: It reminds us to carry on following our own creative paths through life, in whatever forms they may take.
Foxtrot, Charleston
By Grace Batsie, 15, of Jericho
The ladies sit on park benches
in little groups of three,
all lined up in platform clogs,
plus glittering berets.
They are ready to dance the foxtrot,
muster up the Charleston.
The ladies sit in rows of three,
ready to stand up and dance,
but never will they find the chance.
Their glittering berets hung up on shelves,
platform clogs locked away
while they wait for their moment to come.
The ladies’ fathers were mad about their ambitions in life,
‘cause no good Southern girl wouldn’t want to marry.
So they hang up their foxtrot
and pack away their Charleston.
The ladies now sit on park benches,
adorned by children
from the men they never loved.
Because they were much better at the foxtrot and Charleston
than they were at being in love.
