Poetry is Not Just for Stuffy Old White Men
By Veronica Salib, written June 2022
Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book. I was an awkward sort of kid who didn’t quite fit into my own body and books were a great way to escape that. They were a way to live all the lives I couldn’t quite get my hands on. As I grew into my own body in high school, I let go of that love of reading. I was busier with makeup, school dances, cheer practice, and unrequited love.
In my freshman year of high school, one of my teachers had us all celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 29). We were meant to each bring in our favorite—or just a poem—and share it with the class. Frankly, I dreaded this. Not only did I have anxiety around public speaking, but what was I going to bring. I didn’t have a favorite poem. I didn’t even have an OK-it-doesn’t-suck-that-bad poem.
I ended up picking a poem that I found posted anonymously online. It was cheesy, rhymed, and all of six lines long but that’s beside the point. That day I heard kinds of poetry that I had never heard before. Lines that perfectly described how I was feeling. People had put words to the emotions I could never quite explain.
Up until that point, I was never a fan of poetry. Poetry to me was written by stuffy old white guys who had no idea what it was like living as a 15-year-old Egyptian girl in a school of mostly white kids.
Now I won’t lie to you; it wasn’t until a year later that I fell in love with poetry. That same teacher introduced me to a spoken word poet named Sarah Kay, who absolutely captivated me. I watched every single one of her videos and every Ted Talk. I bought every poetry book she had written. I spent hours on end going through the recommended videos on her YouTube page.
What I learned was poetry isn’t just for old stuffy white guys.
Who would’ve thought?
Poetry is for women who didn’t quite feel comfortable in their skin. Poetry is for men who are struggling with their sexuality. Poetry is for people of color who had to come to terms with the microaggressions they would face daily. Poetry is for people falling in love and healing from the scars that love tends to leave behind.
Poetry is for mothers struggling to raise their sons to be good men and fathers who are amazed at their daughters’ minds. Poetry is for the angry loved ones left behind when someone passes, and that same loved one 10 years down the line when the wounds have scabbed over. And, believe it or not, poetry is for 15 (now 23) year-old Egyptian girls living in a world dominated by old white men.
Late in college, I began to write consistently for the first time. I was always one to scribble thoughts, but as soon as things got difficult, I shut down, put the notebook away, and hid. When my life got hard, and there was no hiding from the ugly, I decided to lean into it. To journal all the terrible feelings and work through them instead of working around them.
The newfound appreciation for writing returned my love of reading. This time it was slightly different. Instead of reading to escape my life, I ended up reading books about my life. I found authors who wrote about similar experiences to mine and how they grew in the direction of the sun rather than towards the roots from which they came. The comfort I found in the words of a stranger just fueled my own writing more.
When I started to go to therapy and unpack all the issues I had stuffed into a neat little gift-wrapped box, writing became my safe space. The things it was hard to say aloud went down on the paper. It was easy to look at these journal entries, poems, and notes in the margin and identify my feelings. It was like writing them out took me out of the situation and let me acknowledge the hurt I felt and the progress I had made.
Writing is what helped me quit my job. And I know that doesn’t sound like a great thing, but I promise you it is. I worked a job that I thought was an excellent fit for me, it had its downsides like every job did, but if it weren’t for my writing, I would have never realized how exhausting it was to pretend to love something that was sucking the life out of me. It helped me acknowledge my greatest loves to date, reading and writing.
It wasn’t until I skimmed through all my journal entries that I decided to make my major career switch from medicine to publishing. Don’t get me wrong; it was not an overnight decision. I’m nothing if not an anxiety-ridden, pro-con list writing, research-doing neurotic freak. But it was the spark that lit the fire.
And when I did leave my job, made the major career switch, and was met with rejection after rejection, disappointment after disappointment, it was writing that kept me sane. I acknowledged the struggles that I faced, the anger, the fatigue, the outright depression. And still, it was the writing that always made me come back; it was realizing how much I enjoyed my little short stories, how excited I got when a friend asked me to edit their paper, and how I could write pages and pages about lines in a book or poem that resonated with me.
If you asked me today, I wouldn’t say I’m a fantastic writer or poet by any means, but it is a massive part of my life. If you asked me, I would say I write for the girl who was too awkward to go out and live her own adventures. I write for the girl who used to hate poetry. I write for the girl too caught up in the boy who didn’t love her back. I write for the girl who thought poetry was for stuffy old white men. I write for the 15-year-old Egyptian girl in a school of mostly white kids.
I write for the girl who hid from the difficult things. I write for the girl who was brave enough to admit she needed help. I write for the girl unpacking her neat little gift box. I write for the girl who was too clouded by the plan she laid out for herself to realize it was killing her. I write for the girl who quit her job and dealt with all the discomfort of being in limbo. But most of all, I write for the girl I am now. The girl who has finally gotten her foot in the door, has finally begun to let go of the father who hurt her, finally started to listen to her internal dialogue, and the girl who has finally begun to embrace all the things that bring her joy.
Veronica Salib was the summer publications intern at Yellow Arrow Publishing and is currently an editorial associate. She works as an assistant editor for a healthcare media company. Veronica graduated from the University of Maryland in 2021 and hopes to return to school and obtain a master’s in publishing.
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