Poets see the world with “new eyes”. They make the ordinary extraordinary by paying attention to the particulars, noting the specifics of a feeling or experience and building images that connect and communicate by expressing our common humanity. Jade Carter and Adrianna Garner are poets, and students, at Anacortes High School. They interviewed one another, reflecting on poetry in their lives.

What does poetry mean to you?

Addi: Poetry is a way to express what the world is to you right now. It’s a way of distilling all this input that you come across in your daily life and condensing it into its most bare essentials. Poetry is a way of playing with language and breaking the rules in a way that isn’t possible anywhere else. It means picking apart the world around you and blending it with your most candid emotions, and bending language into a shape to fit the truth you’re trying to express.

JADE: To me, poetry is an artful mode of expression. It is a way to weave words into emotions or experiences in ways that might not immediately make sense, but that carry deeper meaning. It is the lens through which I can look at the world and unpack it in a way that helps me to better comprehend my surroundings and complicated emotions. It is also a venue for me to share my experiences in a way that allows other people to relate.

How has poetry impacted your life?

Addi: It’s given me a place to say the things that I need to say without worrying about being interrupted.

It’s made me a stronger communicator because I’ve gotten into the habit of really closely examining my language and I’ve learned that every word matters.

It has let me assign meaning and make sense of things that seem sort of chaotic in real life.

You get so caught up in the random chaos and negativity that comes with just being a human, but you channel all that chaos and fear and anger and what have you into something that makes it all seem so simple.

Through poetry, I’ve had the chance to meet some really amazing, impressive people, and some people who are really important to me.

Jade: Poetry has always been a way for me to express emotions that are otherwise hard to deal with. It helps me look at a situation or feeling and, through writing, figure out what my reaction is on a more intimate level. It helps me look inside myself and understand, and simultaneously allows me to see the outside world more clearly. Poetry is about finding meaning in fewer words, and that really works for me. It allows me to unclutter daily life and see past the shallow, petty things that we get caught up in.

What experiences or learning opportunities have helped you grow as a poet?

Addi: I think participating in Poetry Out Loud helped me grow as a writer and a communicator, and I think just a person in general. Reading and speaking someone else’s voice and having the chance to act as a vessel for everything a poem can mean is so valuable in terms of empathizing with someone.

Jade: Over the years, my best friend and I have taken up the writing practice of sending each other a poem a day. This really helped me to just write and keep that thought pattern alive and running for extended periods of time.

Sophomore year was the first time that I had a poet in the classroom, and it was a wonderful experience. Daemond Arrindell has visited my classes several times over the years, and has encouraged me to expand my poetic style by introducing me to different writing practices that pushed me to use different forms. I was at a plateau in my writing; stuck on stream-of-conscious. His different techniques helped me to grow as a writer and expand my repertoire.

Addi Gardner, a senior at Anacortes High School, plans to attend Stanford University this fall. She hopes to get involved with the Spoken Word Organization there. She was a semi-finalist in the National Poetry Out Loud Competition in Washington D.C. this year. She has attended a month-long intensive writing program at Brown University. She helped organize and perform in the “Voices; Resiliency through the Arts” student-led performance at the high school.

Jade Carter, a junior at Anacortes High School, is a two-time student winner of the Skagit River Poetry Foundation’s Phyllis L. Ennes Poetry Contest. She will read at the Skagit River Poetry Festival next week. She has participated in Poetry Out Loud Program throughout high school, and helped develop and produce Voices: Resilience Through the Arts at AHS. She continues to write and perform.

[She loved raspberries]

She loved raspberries

those tart ruby caps

And sometimes

in the winter

She would go with her mother

and buy a small, over-priced pallet

Craving the carefree taste of summer.

— Jade Carter

Roadwork

Tell me the story about the aftermath.

About the red car

and the man inside it, red in the face

at the red light,

my red car seat and my brother’s red hoodie,

and how you saw red in your tunnel vision.

Tell me that it was late

and rescue never came

and we stared at my little blond pigtails in the rearview mirror,

gas station zombies forgetting we had been human.

Tell me how we walked down the middle of the road,

watching the sun reflect off the wreckage.

How I mistook the ripples of

crushed metal for lakewater,

How the skid marks on the road curled into ferns

and waved in the breeze,

The hubcaps turned into silver women and stood up to dance.

Tell me about the way I, all of five years old, asked you to fix it all.

Tell me about how I still believed you could.

I took the parts I could remember

and I glued them back together

the way I wished I could have back then.

And I’m seventeen now and sometimes

I feel like I never left that street –

Tell me how to stop walking in circles around the block

Tell me where the accident ends and the future starts

Tell me a story where you’re not the Band-aid and I’m not the knife.

Tell me I’m not the distraction in the backseat that made you blind to the lights.

Tell me the gas station pumps aren’t going to wrap around my ankles

And drag me back while I break my fingers one by one grabbing at the asphalt,

Tell me I don’t always have to see myself as a car crash

Staring into a mirror and seeing a shattered windshield,

Tell me I still have time.

Tell me that it all can be bent back into shape

— Addi Garner