Susan Sullivan, Opus Literary Magazine advisor and English/Creative Writing teacher spoke to a collection of students, fellow teachers in the English department, and school board member Kathy Smith during two cougar-time sessions on April 8, known as the “Poetry Program.” Sullivan shared an anecdote of her journey to work one morning, where she envisioned a construction worker having a poem on his phone that he would read while he worked.
“I had a fond imagination that every time he stepped back to the curb and pulled out his cell phone, that he was reading a poem,” said Sullivan to the poetry program. “Wouldn’t that be fun if we could get other people to have a poetry site to go to, and to take advantage of having poetry in our lives?”
To that effect, Opus had prepared an assortment of “pocket poems” for the group, which were miniature sheets of paper with a variety of short poems for those who attended.
Sullivan introduced editors of Opus, including senior editor-in-chief Lily Moens, and Hayley Johnson who was not present at the time.
“We have a national student-poet, Aline,” said Moens. “We decided that a joint-honor celebration of her accomplishments and National Poetry Month meant we should hold a little event.”
Finally, the published poet herself spoke to the group. Sophomore Aline Dolinh reflected on her journey to being published in The Best Teen Writing of 2013, and what it was like to receive the 2013 National Gold Medal Award for her original poem. Dolinh spoke to the attendees about her successful work with ESOL students on self-portrait poetry, and described the innovative opportunity as “incredible,” with “surprising results.”
Dolinh also read aloud an original poem, entitled “Twelve Temporal Directions to a Home.”
“My experience with publication is that it feels awesome and really validating beause it lets you know that readers are actually enjoying and connecting with your work,” said Dolinh. “In my opinion, a piece of writing is only successful if it has actual meaning to you. My goal was to make peoples’ lives better through poetry.”
