This school year The Advocate, the school literary magazine I’ve been a part of for 4 years or so renamed to Katha Magazine and merged with other school magazines.

Following the OSCar’s theme ‘Under the Stars’, the magazine chose to open submissions (poetry, prose, art, photography) for their upcoming printed edition.

One afternoon I’d written a poem to match the theme, entitled Saccharine Strychnine. I’d been initially planning on writing a villanelle, inspired by Sylvia Plath’s poetry. However, that format was soon abandoned for a 2 stanza poem, each stanza being an octave. The lines are in iambic tetrameter, and non-rhymed, making the poem blank verse. It features themes of trust and betrayal.

Sometime later I’d written another poem under the same theme titled Mattress Lives, however I’d sent it in too late and it didn’t get published in the printed edition. The process of writing the poetry was engaging and challenged my creative thought process. Below is a photo of the drafted version of one poem, as well as the final product:

Third poem written too: Two Brothers. (you can see one stanza in red in the book) Wasn’t sent in because it didn’t fit the theme and wasn’t written for the magazine, but rather as a way of processing emotions.