As Adrienne Rich once said, “poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language.” Terry Gasparakis, a student at Park High, has chosen to take Poetry Class for the first semester of his junior year. Gasparakis recommends the class because he says that after taking poetry, “I’m able to make more connections when I’m reading.” Overall, he considers poetry “a really good class to take.”
One of Gasparakis’s favorite poems that he has recently written is called “Antarctica.” He comments that he wrote this poem in an attempt to raise awareness about climate change in Antarctica and “how it is going to impact our earth.” He explains that his goal with this poem was to “guilt trip his audience into feeling bad for the wildlife in Antarctica” and what is currently happening there. For example, one line in his poem says, “Antarctica is the first victim to the humans who seem not to care. The life that once considered Antarctica their home, have begun to drift away.”
Although he is not normally a big fan of writing poetry, Gasparakis clarifies that he really enjoyed writing this specific poem about Antarctica. He usually prefers more concrete writing unlike poetry, so having a more concrete topic like climate change was helpful. Gasparakis remarks that “if the topic is good, then I like writing poetry.”
Gasparakis shares that the inspiration behind his poem was a photograph that he found in a book in the library. The photograph was an image of Antarctica. In the picture, there was a lot of water, and it showed the ice was melting. Gasparakis says that “I believe in climate change, and I feel passionate about it, so I decided to write a poem on that.”