Students working with Title Wave, a Roger Williams University student literary magazine, took part in HEART Fest, organized by Communities of Hope, the CoLab, and the School of Humanities, Art, & Education. Students read their original poems and creative pieces.
Title Wave is a student-run publication for the students that works to give hands-on experience with creative writing and publication. The magazine works as a student outlet for creativity and production.
Eight students read some of their pieces to the audience and got the chance to present their work. Some touched on the current state of the world, while others dug deep into their own experiences to pull some emotion from the audience.
One poem by student Emily Cabral talked about the current state of the world, speaking from her own experience and the toll it can take on us individually. Cabral said,“I wasn’t shattered like the people whose stories I’ve heard, just dulled at the scene of the world’s corruption and cruelty.”
Other poems stemmed from personal loss and grief, something everyone deals with at one time or another. Hannah Defeo shared a poem about her personal experience with grief. “The quietest drive of our lives before us only to stand in a line embracing endless, faceless bodies, forgetting what our grandfather looked like before his skin turned paper white and bloodless,” said Defeo. “Forgetting what he felt like before his fingers turned to plaster, body shrouded in an outfit I had never seen him wear before.”
Other pieces, such as one by Finn Audette, touched on feeling unable to express emotions in an accurate way because he is “not a poet.” “I’m not a poet, even my cat knows it at first glance, I can’t make daffodils dance,” said Audette. This separate narrative helps to show others that they do not have to write a certain way or be classified as a writer in order to accurately portray emotions.
Pieces such as these, sharing personal and intimate experiences, let the rest of the world know that they are not alone. There is someone, somewhere, going through something similar, if not the same thing. These students show that all it takes is determination and creative freedom, proving to the Roger Williams campus that anyone can be a writer.
By Addison Mason