Receiving this honor felt great for senior Tyler Hix, but he admits that his poem was originally just a “Do Now” for theatre arts class. Photo by: Alaynee Mora
By Alaynee Mora
Senior Tyler Hix has worked hard for a long time to express himself through his writing and his hard work finally paid off when his work was published in the poetry anthology Stars in Our Hearts, which is published by the World Poetry Movement as part of their annual amateur poetry contest.
Hix is an example of what self-confidence and hard work can do. Hix said, “Honestly, I thought I was going to win. The best way to be optimistic and achieve anything you want is just to believe in yourself. If you have confidence towards your work, then you have a better chance of winning. However, as time passed, I forgot that I even submitted a poem to a contest. Two months later, I got a letter in the mail saying that my poem is going to be published in Stars in Our Hearts. It is such a great feeling and I am glad I followed my instincts.”
Some writers start writing when they are going through a rough time or just simply finding an interest in writing and many different reasons. Hix said he started writing “when I was able to write. There really is not a specific date on being able to write because all of the classes we take require some sort of creative writing, or writing in general. I mainly started writing good material junior and senior year. I have been recording rap music which uses a lot of poetry in its elements. So it is a great way to express how I feel,” Hix said. Creative writing and a lot of English teachers inspire kids to have hope in themselves and to keep practicing their writing.
People think of writing as a “stress reliever,” a way to just express how they feel, or let alone just letting their imagination come up with a creative poem. Hix said, “Of course I express how I feel towards writing. In everything we express an opinion about the way we feel about what you are arguing about. I feel as if the most valuable expressions inside are the ones that are expressed through text and could be shared with many readers.”
Sometimes when authors write poems, they sometime always have someone they look up to, or someone that inspired them to start writing. Hix said, “I would not quite call it an inspiration. It was me doing a Do Now in the beginning of Theatre Arts I with Ms. [Jane] Faulstich and our assignment was to write a poem on our definition of concentration. So the inspiration, if any, would be my concentration towards one thing.”
Authors normally have a meaning to their poems. Either a story of something that actually happened or a fantasy that they have had. Authors sometimes have some reasons why they started writing. Hix said, “What made me start writing poems was my interest in making rap music. Rap music is misunderstood to be the ‘bad kid’ music. When you take the time to listen to all of the different rap songs out there, there is way more motivation to offer than what most songs have to offer. Once I realized that my raps were pretty legitimate is when I took the time to express my opinions or my morals and ethics on a piece of paper to express them in a poem.”
Winning any type of an achievement or award makes anyone feel special and proud. Most people that win an award are shocked that they have won. Most of the people that enter for contests always have no “self-confidence”, but when they win, everything is turned around and they feel so grateful that they have won that award. Hix said, “Winning the award made me feel in a way as if I was on top of the world. You know, you have certain relationships with many different teachers and students that were way different before I got published. Now that many teachers know about my publication, they seem to be more lenient and express their thoughts in a more warm-feeling way. So in a sense, winning the award made me feel proud in my hard work here at Plymouth High School. In a more simple way of saying it, I feel so happy that not many high-schoolers could quite understand.”
Hix’s advice to future writers is “Do not try to get published, get published. Write something that means the most to you and could be expressed and followed easily. Write something that is unique to you and a trait that the typical person would not write about.”