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.
“I am woman, hear me roar,” Australian musician Helen Reddy sang in 1971. It’s a powerful message that’s still seen on the posters of women championing their rights outside of state buildings today, and one echoed by Milton poet Maria Beaulieu. Drawing on the feminist chutzpah of her unnamed idols, this week’s featured writer stomps her feet and announces her new, fiery fortitude to the world.
Warrior woman
By Maria Beaulieu, 17, of Milton
A warrior-princess
with golden armor
and an aluminum core
told me to keep my anger.
Let it boil and let it rise
until the steam hits your tongue,
and when they chime how you’re too young,
breathe fire from your soul.
Let your words be the embers
fallen at their feet.
Don’t let your tears put out heat —
watch it burn slowly.
Warrior, goddess, princess, queen,
with armor that’s both palpable and strong,
teaches me how my anger is passion
and my directness is professional.
Shows me that saying no is not being disagreeable,
just as crying is not weak or womanly,
but human.
These lessons I know to be true,
if they are the only facts that I’ll ever know.
Because warrior, goddess, princess, queen,
is what I see
in tide pools on sunny days,
and when her gaze meets mine,
mouth in a straight line — not smiling to appease the masses —
my own reflection floods the frame.
