So hard it is
To grasp the concept of time
That even covered in blood and grime
Even in the most pleasant of moments
You will not be thinking of now
And how high
You can soar, or what heights you can reach
You will be thinking of
Tomorrow,
Last month, and
Next week.
You will be thinking so much
That the very last thoughts
of your mind
Will be not
Oh, I have run out of time
But, oh but what of tomorrow?
When there is, in fact
Only sorrow
“This was the first time I’ve shared my poems publicly other than in middle and senior school poetry contests here at MIS. And though I was very nervous sharing my work, I am very glad that I did” writes Evelina Gnezdilova. Evelina created a volume of poetry entitled Time: Waiting, Running, Gone for her 10th Grade Personal Project. Her learning goal was to learn about the self-publishing process that goes into creating a book and how to generally make it more aesthetically appealing. “For this project, I took a lot of my inspiration from Florence Welch’s “Useless Magic” because I loved the way her book seemed like a look into her personal journal, and I would love to share my poetry in a similar, personal way”.
Don’t imagine that her Personal Project was a one-off: Evelina’s journey as a writer started as soon as she could hold a crayon: “I started school when I was 3 in an international school in Switzerland; and since learning how to write, I’ve loved to do so”. She had an early passion for journaling and especially writing song lyrics.
In middle and senior school at MIS, Evelina loved any projects that involved creative writing. However, she confesses that her difficulty focusing for long periods of time has led her to specialize in short-form poetry! She loves to write poetry because “it is much shorter than other forms of writing and there aren’t any boundaries like characters and events making sense within storylines. I can write a poem in a few minutes and have it convey all that I want to say, or perhaps only emotions without much sense regarding real life".
Writing poetry is often associated with emotion and vulnerability. For young artists and writers out there, Evelina knows that vulnerability and fear can inhibit creatives from sharing their work. She has the following encouragement:
“I think that good art is always personal. It needs to have emotion to convey something, to make viewers and readers feel something. It’s good if your art has personal elements in it even if you do think they’re embarrassing to share. There will always be people who don’t like your art; you yourself likely don’t like certain styles and artists, so of course everyone will have opinions. I just think that they shouldn’t matter to you; and the moment they do, your art loses that personal, emotional touch that makes it so interesting”.