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.
“Look forward, never back” is a nugget of wisdom we often hear from older adults who wish they hadn’t spent parts of their lives stuck in the past — but this week, we hear it from a young person, too. Featured poet Scarlett Cannizzaro of Essex acknowledges that our pasts create the blueprints for our identities, yet our own personal growth depends upon us reaching out toward the future.
History is history
By Scarlett Cannizzaro, 14, of Essex
I walk down
the busy streets,
and I spot
many different people,
many different things,
many different lives.
I see sisters-in-law
gossiping,
brothers arguing,
parents holding their
children close.
And I see history
in every one of them.
Whether it’s a history
of joy,
of sadness,
hope,
grief,
there is always a history.
Without someone’s past
there is no present,
no future.
Without someone’s mistakes,
there are no goals.
And though your past may
create you,
define you,
it can’t be
looked back upon constantly,
no matter how momentous
or weighted the events
that lie there may be.
Your history creates
the blueprints for your future,
but you can do so much more than
let your past become your future,
your life.
You can mix things up a bit,
you can change,
you can get better,
you can become your own version of yourself.
The past must stay in the past,
and the future is up to you.
