Finding an Authentic Voice

I made it to the poetry Sweet Sixteen!

Surviving two rounds of March Madness Poetry was my personal goal for the competition. I’m happy about that and honored to have faced such gracious poets: Allison Hertz and Robyn Hood Black.

My family stayed up late for the announcement of Round 3 words. Mine is “quasi.” I made a few notes before I went to sleep, and then had a dream about baby chickens. Don’t ask.

Give the gift of chicks to a family in a developing country!

In the morning, I sketched out two of the initial ideas before I got out of bed.

The first idea came from the definition of “quasi”: almost, sort of like. It’s in the voice of a child who is adopted and doesn’t quite look like the other members of his family. He’s not as tall as his sister. His hair is brown, but not the same shade as his mother’s. He lacks the family’s freckles and cleft chin.

Quasi poem attempt 1.

The couplet using quasi was:

Sometimes I feel like I’m their quasi kid.

They love me, but I don’t quite fit in.

The poem's voice didn’t sound authentic. I wasn’t doing  justice to the complicated emotions surrounding adoption. 

The second idea went like this: funny poems have worked for me so far, how about a kid’s art project that looks sort of, kind of, almost like…?

Actual Shovan kid art project.
"Gargoyle" is proudly displayed on our bookshelf.

This poem has a narrative. The speaker brings his parents to the school art fair. They admire his paintings and a lovely mask, but then they see his clay sculpture.

Quasi poem attempt 2.

This brown clay masterpiece, what could it be?

It resembles a fish or a tap dancing tree.

Is it a dog knocking over a pail

or a quasi-chimp who’s escaping from jail?

Blah. The focus is on the parents. The child's voice gets lost. He's just reporting on events, not describing how he feels about Mom and Dad dissing his sculpture.

I had my morning cup of tea. Never underestimate the power of good British tea. Sent one kid off to school. Ate some Life cereal (cinnamon). Started again on the computer.

The phrase “quasi human” came into my head. Maybe my character was a mermaid, half girl and half fish.

Are you my speaker?

But when I began writing, the person speaking was more like a ghost—the ghost of a girl haunting her school.

By the end of the poem, the ghostliness had become a metaphor.

Sometimes when we pass in the hall

I hear you say, “She’s no one at all.”

I’m invisible, though I wear what you wear

a hoodie, jeans, and long, straight hair.

Showing off for your latest boy,

you scan the crowd for some new toy

to play with, tease, do as you please.

I tuck into shadows. I hide. I freeze.

I’m quasi human, not quite here.

When you look at me, I disappear.

The speaker feels (though it’s never stated directly) like a ghost at school. As the victim of a bully, she is invisible—the bully ignores her or treats her like a non-person. She also tries to make herself invisible when the bully is looking for a target.

After a few quick drafts and revisions, I read the poem out loud to my daughter—she was about to dash for the bus. Julia is in middle school, which is where I imagine the poem taking place.

Jules gave it a thumbs up, but in reading the poem out loud I noticed some problems with meter. Each line had 8 or 9 beats. Line 3 and line 8 had more. They stuck out.

Went about my day, reciting the poem in my head.

Here is a full page of notes—all on the second couplet. I wrote these in the parking lot of the health food store. 

Reworking a single couplet.
The photo cut off the left margin of the page,
which includes rhyming word banks.

I decided to leave line 8 alone, other thank replacing the active word “tuck” with a more ghostly and passive verb, “melt.”

It’s okay that this line sticks out a little bit. The line carries emotional weight. The two short sentences at the end of the line have a quick cadence, like a heart stopping and starting. Keeping it slightly longer than the other lines is a way to emphasize that this particular line is important.

Oh, and a title! Since this is an epistolary poem, a poetic “letter” from one person to another, I titled it “Dear Bully.” There’s a note about the title at the bottom of the poem.

Here is the final poem, which you can also read (AND VOTE FOR!) at Think Kid, Think!, along with the other March Madness Poems:

Dear Bully

Sometimes when we pass in the hall

I hear you say, “She’s no one at all.”

I’m invisible, though we both wear

a hoodie, jeans, the same long hair.

Showing off for your latest boy,

you scan the crowd for some new toy

to play with, pick apart and tease.

I melt into shadows. I hide. I freeze.

I’m quasi human, not quite here.

When you look at me, I disappear.

Note: The title refers to Dear Bully: 70Authors Tell Their Stories, Edited by Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones.

Laura Shovan

Check out the "Dear Bully" website.

Was I bullied as a teen? That's a long story, so first...

Poetry Friday is at Greg's house, GottaBook. I'm sure there will be more posts from the Sweet 16 authletes, along with book reviews and original poetry from our great community of bloggers.

And now, my bully story. The short version.

UPDATE (teens and up only!):

Writing "Dear Bully" brought up memories of my own bully, an ex-boyfriend. (Admission: I own but have not yet read the Dear Bully anthology, probably because of the memories it's likely to trigger.)

We broke up at the end of sophomore year in high school, but stayed friends, sometimes more than that, for a few months. Then I left the tight social circle we shared.

It was hard to walk away from some of those friendships, but I wasn't ready for the drinking--and other things--that were happening when we hung out together.

After a year-long relationship with my ex, I had left many other friendships untended. Only a handful of old friends were willing to welcome me back. By midway through junior year, we all started driving. That's when the real bullying started.

My ex would sit in his car and wait for me in the school parking lot. Every day. It didn't matter what time I left. Whether I stayed at school until 6 PM, or left at the last bell, he was there.

As soon as I started to pull out of the lot, my ex would slam his foot on the accelerator and cut  me off, swerving to miss my car and beat me through the lot's single exit. I don't know how many times he nearly hit me.

It went on for months. I began to panic every time I had to stay after school, but I never told my parents. I never told a teacher. I didn't want to admit this was happening.

Finally, a dear friend told her parents, who told mine. The car-bullying stopped, but things did not get easier at school. Every day, I felt the way the speaker in my poem does. I wished I were invisible, below the radar. But I also felt invisible, as former friends disappeared from my life.

Almost 30 years later, this incident is still painful. That's probably why I haven't talked about it much, even as an adult.

There are some great online resource for teens who are experiencing bullying. Here's one I like because it has kids' voices front and center:  http://www.pacer.org/bullying/