A poetic expression

Everyone has their own form of self-expression, but not everyone’s musings become a published book. 

“Worth Saying,” a collection of poems written by Mountain Brook Junior High School ninth-grade student Nancy North, was published in October and features about 20 of her pieces. 

She started keeping all of the poems she has written within the past year and created a small collection. 

“I have the first actual poems from scratch that I completed in my book and [one of] my most recent poems,” she said. 

Nancy started writing poems when she had to in seventh grade English class. 

“The only unit I didn’t do well in in English was poetry, and I hated it,” she said. “Then, somewhere in eighth grade, I started writing it, and it was just something that was really fun for me.”

As she grew to love writing poetry, she began appreciating the work of other writers, who in turn inspired her to write more. Poetry became a way to make her thoughts and emotions more tangible, and it soon grew to be her main form of self-expression. 

“I write a lot to help deal with my feelings,” she said. “Anything that kinda has some sort of meaning to me is what I usually write about.”

Now, poetry as self-expression helps her. “Once I started putting it out there, it was so much easier to move on with things and build and learn from everything that has happened,” Nancy said. “As I write it out, I usually start to go over it in my mind and realize how it’s not that big of a deal.”

She decided to turn her collection into a book because she was proud of what she had accomplished with her poems, but didn’t have a published work in mind as a goal. 

“I didn’t really think the end result would be a book,” she said, also mentioning that it came to a surprise to even her parents. Nancy admitted that she often worked on her book during school, quickly switching screens on her computer when teachers walked by. “I wanted it to be a surprise in some sort of way.”

Although it was difficult to find a publishing company who would work with poems, Nancy still doesn’t let that hold her back from her future as an author. “I’ve always wanted to publish a book,” she said. “Now, I’ve published a book, and I still want to publish a book.”

Dr. Ruth Beenken, who teaches creative writing at Mountain Brook Junior High, has watched Nancy’s poetry grow. “She has written a beautiful book. I’m really, really impressed,” she said. “For a 14-year-old, that’s a lot.”

Through her writings, Nancy has been able to express herself more, and she hopes that her book will help others deal with whatever they are going through, too. “There’s a quote, I’m not sure who said it, that everything you write should be worth saying,” Nancy said. “Everything that I had written I had found worth saying, and I want to inspire others to share parts of their stories, too.”

Readers can find Nancy’s book, “Worth Saying,” on amazon.com.