To start this unit we read through a number of poems, each meant to ultimately inspire us for the creation of our own poem. The main goal for this unit was to have each of us grow as poets, adapting too and overcoming different poetic difficulties. After learning about poetic devices, such as simile, rhyme scheme, and alliteration, we began writing our own poetry. This could be in any form we wanted, personally I chose to create a song. It could have been anything we researched before, such as slam, haiku, sonnets, and free form. After finishing the writing aspect of our poem, we had to display it in a performance. I gave a live performance, playing the guitar and singing at the same time. If I were to go back and do something differently in this project, I would change the way I sang. I am not an amazing singer, but I still went through with a live performance. I would have liked to develop my ability to sing, broadening my range of vocal inflection.
My poem
Now I Do Recall
It was a bit of a rainy day, and I was comin’ up the hill, I was lookin round the windows, when I lost a bit o’ a will. Went right into the little pub, and oh god it was a sight, for walking in beside me was Nancy on my right. She’s taller than me by two heads, and by far twice as strong, her mind is quick and witted, she never can be wrong. She spoke to the bar man, and quickly he obeyed, no one would mess with Nancy on any ol’ day.
Here’s to Nancy! The kindest of them all. Oh! Even among the rain, she'll smile through the hall, she’s always there to help, hearing every call,d oh the dark and dirty street where I thought I would fall.
Nancy took her drink in hand, and walked out to a stool, I just stood there blinkin’, surely looking like a fool. A loud cheer went out, ringing round the hall, it was meant for Nancy while I sat there on the wall, Nancy smiled a big one, and here I am all alone, she was the most loved, the words cut like a drone. They gathered all around her, like soldiers in salute. Each was happy so they never thought to shoot. Here’s to Nancy! The kindest of them all. Oh! Even among the rain, she'll smile through the hall, to my dying day now I do recall, how Nancy had each of us ensnared to enthrall.
I sat there watchin, seein’ the merry amber light. Their voices cut like fire, or a gun brought to a fight. The bullet went through my head, and out the other side, it rattled ‘round my brain until I thought that I had died. Not one noticed me, and then darkness loomed in, and now I’m just sittin’ here, longing for some kin. I took in a sip, and jumped up in a swell, then tripped out the door, avowing, “I’ll see y’all in hell.”
Here’s to Nancy! The kindest of them all. Oh! Even among the rain, she'll smile through the hall, oh even the stupidest must feel the pall, for Nancy can’t be anything but a muddy downfall.
Entering the gray scape, a chill sent through my spine, a door began to open, and I saw it as a sign… The figure who walked through it, they looked straight into my soul. They threw my mind into a storm where it was crashed upon a shoal, its shape was cast in gray, its eyes pierced a dark white, it took a hold over me, and snuffed out all the light, the amber tone of the bar, the black of the rain, all became one color, a dark gray stain.
Here’s to Nancy! The kindest of them all. Oh! Even among the rain, she'll smile through the hall, oh the dark mind that wrapped my head like a shall, not even Nancy could save me from that squall.
When I stepped into the dark, and my eyes became too blind, I swore away the darkness, and never looked behind, I raced along the muddy road, never lookin’ down, my foot caught an old rock and I fell right on my crown. I do remember lookin’ up, seein’ the stars around, wondering if I’ll be left here, stuck right onto the ground. I had begun to give up hope, and to return right to the land, when Nancy came right over and offered me her hand!
Here’s to Nancy! The kindest of them all. Oh! Even among the rain, she'll smile through the hall, she’s always there to help, hearing every call, oh the dark and dirty street where I thought I would fall!
Artist Statement
Shea Davis My poem is sung in the form of a song, there is a plot, story, and many minute aspects that create meaning and theme. It follows the story of someone coming home from work and walking into a bar. This narrator walks in and sees Nancy, someone people look up to and think is powerful and awe-inspiring, then sits around while everyone praises her. The main theme of my poem is loneliness, which I tried to convey through the narrator's experiences. First, they walk in and praise Nancy, because she is supposed to be amazing. They go along with what everyone else does, but slowly start to lose energy, becoming angry and lonely. All of this accumulates in the narrator leaving the bar and falling in the mud, where Nancy comes along and helps him up. The narrator goes from content, to happy, to lonely, to angry, and back down to depressed, finally ending with contentedness again. Nancy is a metaphor throughout the poem for a person someone looks up to or sees as popular. Everyone has someone like this in their life. She is the kind of person whom everyone likes, to the point that it becomes annoying. Throughout the course of the story, there is a lot of symbolism involving a gun and bullets. These are symbols of the power of other people's words. People saying things can be incredibly impactful. The poem states, “Their voices cut like fire or a gun brought to a fight”. This is talking about how these words pierced the narrator’s mind, stabbing through them in a figurative sense. This metaphor continues with, “It rattled ‘round my brain until I thought that I had died.” This is referring to how the narrator is overthinking everything everyone is saying and getting paranoid about it. They see other people having fun and believe they can’t join in. This then leads them to the gray figure. The gray figure is another metaphor, this time about how it feels to be in this state. When you are lonely, your body shuts down in a way and your emotions can be dulled, so the gray figure is meant to smother the narrator and drown them. It states, “The amber tone of the bar, the black of the rain, all became one color, a dark gray stain,” and this is meant to point out how dull everything becomes after a while.
My poem is about loneliness and how it affected me. This poem has a lot of personal connection to me, the writer, mainly through my personal experience and the music it is set to. My inspiration for this song was my time last year through Covid. It was my first year in high school and I walked in ready for the year, as most people were. The bar in my poem represents this. When I got there it was incredibly difficult for me to connect with anyone because I was very Covid safe last year, so I never felt comfortable being near anyone or meeting up after school. Others in my grade did this though, so they became close and friendly, while I became more withdrawn. I watched others have fun, while I felt like I couldn’t, which translated into loneliness for me and over time depression. I didn’t feel any emotion but a strange blandness and sadness. At one point I started crying in the car with my mom, and I finally told her how I was feeling. It was an incredibly sad day for me, but it helped me to try and reach out. I created a group of people and we all hung out at least once a week last year. The damage had already been done though and I still have weird twinges of depression or anxiety to this day. My poem was meant to reflect how we can all go through this, which is why I never specified the narrator's gender or identity. I hoped that readers would put themselves as the narrator, but I don’t think I did well in this regard. The second piece of personal connection I have to this poem is the music it is set to or the way it is sung. This poem is sung in an Irish style, based on the song Darcy’s Donkey (By Gaelic Storm). I enjoy this type of music and its ability to tell a story through song. This was important to me because I wanted my poem to be entertaining in some way, while still being powerful and deep. This type of music helped me to do that.
Model United Nations
The United Nations is an international peacekeeping organization dedicated to keeping good relations between nations. They have engaged in multiple global conflicts and were created out of the ashes of the second world war. Our class set out to learn about this organization and its policies and procedures. Each of us was assigned a country to research and take the persona of. We were tasked with solving a global issue from the perspective of our country. The issue that we were set with was the Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis, where countless Afghan citizens are being forced from their homes into starvation and poverty. My role in solving the issue was as a MUN chair. This meant that I was in charge of running the conference. I was not assigned a country but instead worked on preparing the delegates for the conference, writing an issue brief, and mapping out the project.
In this project we studied different aspects of adolescence and how humans change during these interesting years. We began by looking into different theories of development, then into moral development. We read part of a book that is entirely about adolescence called Brainstorm. All of these pieces came together and we wrote an essay on our experience as adolescents. As we were doing this we also created a mask that would be paired with the essay. The mask was supposed to represent teenagers and to reflect our essay.