Arthur Beer
There are a countless number of students at Blake with special talents. And a good number of them are actually in the creative writing program! In one of our recent articles, there was an amazing poem written by a student by the name of Arthur Beer from the creative writing program. He is an unbelievable poet with many astonishing pieces. He exclusively writes about poetry with genres of romance, angst, teen dilemmas, etc. He started his poetry journey at the beginning of his freshmen year and has been writing since then. But one thing we are all curious about is…why he started writing. Arthur said “I applied to creative writing mostly just because I had an interest in writing in general. You know, like essays, short stories, which I wasn’t really good at. But I applied and thankfully I got in as you can see. I started getting into poetry around the summer due to the pandemic, and it was sort of like an outlet for me. When Miss Mutunhu became the creative writing teacher, she helped me a lot with improving my writing. One thing she said to me that stuck with me was “With poetry you should be able to defend every line you write.” Which basically means you should always have an explanation because there’s no such thing as overanalyzing a poem because everyone has their own interpretation of poetry.” What are his biggest inspirations? “Sometimes you’ll just hear someone, or something say something to you or on the news, and the words will just pop up in your head and you’ll just get them on to paper a fast as you can.You kind of have to think about what you’ll write about and unfortunately not all writers will be inspired 24/7. And lastly, I asked what words of wisdom he would give starter writers, “I would say the best thing you can do is just keep writing! Poetry is special and sometimes you can get really frustrated trying to find the right words, and writer’s block is a big problem. If you keep writing you just grow with it, and also read numerous works of others. That’s really the best advice I can give.” Arthur Beer is a stupendous reader. We all will look forward to seeing what he does next! Here is one of his works:
Take A Picture, It’ll Last Longer
Arthur Beer
Do you miss what life was?
Warm summer cooled by autumn’s fall
Friends laughing all night long
Movie theater carpet scrunching,
scrunching, scrunching under your feet
Do you miss what life was?
The past brings you in like a familiar smell
Welcomes you in like a childhood home.
But it feels different
And it feels different because it is
…
You miss what life was
So hold the memories close like flaming
matches held in blizzards
And read poems made of memories to
remind you of your own
What else would a poem be for?