Humanities
Poetry
Growing Up
I Go outside withmy friend
We play’n-play
Trip now im on the ground
Ouch ouch my
Knee is red
I goto mommy and she
Band-aids my ouchy
She kisses my head
And I get sleepy-tired
Z zz z
Z z z z zz
Zz Z rainbows
and
Z flying zz z
Zz pigs z
Z z
Waking up feeling tired
Rushing and rushing
Go into school
kids watching- kids judging
I try to speak but my voice starts crAcking
I don't understand why this happens
Im eating lunch-with milk and tray
Eating, wondering when this day will go away
One blink of an eye and i'm back at home and brush my teeth
Then go straight to sleep
Z z z z
Zzz
Z What zz job
will z z I get z
Zz
Drowsy from sleep medicine
Waking up and head to the coffee machine
Put it in a cup and head to work
I work and work and get a check
I use my check to pay my bills
And use my bills to pay for my kids
My kids are growing way too fast
I take a pill then doze asleep.
Zz bills z
Z kids
Z life zzzz
Birds wake me and I get up
I go for a walk
Then I call my kids
Their life is good and happy and swell
I go home and think about life
Reminiscing over how one second i'm falling from running
Then the next i'm falling from weak legs and an old cane
Life is good and taking moments to realize what you have
Can make life much more enjoyable.
For now I will sleep knowing I lived a good life.
Z
Z
Z
Z
z
I Go outside withmy friend
We play’n-play
Trip now im on the ground
Ouch ouch my
Knee is red
I goto mommy and she
Band-aids my ouchy
She kisses my head
And I get sleepy-tired
Z zz z
Z z z z zz
Zz Z rainbows
and
Z flying zz z
Zz pigs z
Z z
Waking up feeling tired
Rushing and rushing
Go into school
kids watching- kids judging
I try to speak but my voice starts crAcking
I don't understand why this happens
Im eating lunch-with milk and tray
Eating, wondering when this day will go away
One blink of an eye and i'm back at home and brush my teeth
Then go straight to sleep
Z z z z
Zzz
Z What zz job
will z z I get z
Zz
Drowsy from sleep medicine
Waking up and head to the coffee machine
Put it in a cup and head to work
I work and work and get a check
I use my check to pay my bills
And use my bills to pay for my kids
My kids are growing way too fast
I take a pill then doze asleep.
Zz bills z
Z kids
Z life zzzz
Birds wake me and I get up
I go for a walk
Then I call my kids
Their life is good and happy and swell
I go home and think about life
Reminiscing over how one second i'm falling from running
Then the next i'm falling from weak legs and an old cane
Life is good and taking moments to realize what you have
Can make life much more enjoyable.
For now I will sleep knowing I lived a good life.
Z
Z
Z
Z
z
Artist Statement
When making this poem, I went through many steps to get this final result. In my process, I had to first find out what kind of poem I wanted to write. Initially, I wanted to make a poem that was nostalgic and something that would remind people of their childhood. Once I started writing, I realized I could make it transition into a teenager and make my poem even better. I got very interested in making my poem have a lot of imagery, and my plan was to start the poem by starting with a child’s perspective and continuously grow into a teen, to an adult, to an old man through use of language. I loved writing about these topics, especially since I could connect to these years that I have just experienced.
I kept working and adding to it and I had it critiqued by my peers and they gave me many more ideas. They gave me some ideas to make the poem extend all the way to death and add more pieces that portrayed the different stages of life. Another idea they gave me was to add a mini “dream” in between scattered Z’s, and make it correspond and connect to the age/stage that it’s in. After I decided I would follow through with their ideas, to add more to my poem and make it have a transition from a child, to a teenager, to an adult, to an older man.
I wanted to write my poem about growing up because I felt like it was going to be an interesting poem that everybody could connect to one way or another, since we have all aged. I also really enjoyed taking time thinking about my younger years and just thinking about it and writing some parts down was very relaxing. I decided to write my poem using poetic license in the form of childlike word structure mainly in the beginning and then getting more literal because I felt like it would be a great challenge to try and write a poem inspired by ee.cummings’ use of poetic license to show a child's perspective. Reading his poem made me feel inspired because I wondered how interesting his process had to be when he was trying to portray a child and the child's mannerisms and ways of speaking. As for the rest of my poem, I did try and make it more literal, because the older we get, the more literal things become to us. This does not necessarily happen intentionally, but it happens nonetheless, and making the poem more literal as it progresses made sense to me while I was writing.
When making this poem, I went through many steps to get this final result. In my process, I had to first find out what kind of poem I wanted to write. Initially, I wanted to make a poem that was nostalgic and something that would remind people of their childhood. Once I started writing, I realized I could make it transition into a teenager and make my poem even better. I got very interested in making my poem have a lot of imagery, and my plan was to start the poem by starting with a child’s perspective and continuously grow into a teen, to an adult, to an old man through use of language. I loved writing about these topics, especially since I could connect to these years that I have just experienced.
I kept working and adding to it and I had it critiqued by my peers and they gave me many more ideas. They gave me some ideas to make the poem extend all the way to death and add more pieces that portrayed the different stages of life. Another idea they gave me was to add a mini “dream” in between scattered Z’s, and make it correspond and connect to the age/stage that it’s in. After I decided I would follow through with their ideas, to add more to my poem and make it have a transition from a child, to a teenager, to an adult, to an older man.
I wanted to write my poem about growing up because I felt like it was going to be an interesting poem that everybody could connect to one way or another, since we have all aged. I also really enjoyed taking time thinking about my younger years and just thinking about it and writing some parts down was very relaxing. I decided to write my poem using poetic license in the form of childlike word structure mainly in the beginning and then getting more literal because I felt like it would be a great challenge to try and write a poem inspired by ee.cummings’ use of poetic license to show a child's perspective. Reading his poem made me feel inspired because I wondered how interesting his process had to be when he was trying to portray a child and the child's mannerisms and ways of speaking. As for the rest of my poem, I did try and make it more literal, because the older we get, the more literal things become to us. This does not necessarily happen intentionally, but it happens nonetheless, and making the poem more literal as it progresses made sense to me while I was writing.
Growth As A Poet Reflection
Making this poem at first, the perspective was very empty and boring. I began making it about a child going into adulthood. This poem I created at first was very short and wasn’t very good. Everybody in my class traded poems and we all refined each other and gave each other ideas on how we could make out poems better and make them more professional and give the perspective we all wanted to give to our audience. Once I used their ideas my poem soon became about a child growing up all the way to an old man. This gave my perspective much more clarity and made my poem much better. An example of this is in old old draft when the first part of my poem where I said, “ one second I’m running, then the next I’m on the ground” but then with refining my poem and with the help of the people that critiqued my poem now it flows better by saying “trip now I’m on the ground”.
The first change I did throughout making my poem was making it not follow normal poetic rules by using poetic license. The poetic license made my poem less literal through the whole beginning all the way to the end. One example of this is at the beginning where I wrote my poem like this. “ I go Outside Withmy friend We play‘n play”. Before I ever wanted to use poetic license I wanted to make a normal poem about growing up into teen years. But once I started brainstorming up some ideas I thought it would be interesting to try and use e.e. Cummings style of poetry. I know by doing this it would make the poem more silly and it would make it more of an interesting poem to read. It definitely makes the experience more different compared to more normal poetry. Doing this made me not necessarily think it made it more “improved”, but different and challenge myself to try a new type of poetry style that I am not used to.
Another change I ended up doing was adding zzz’s in between each age area, and adding mini dreams in between the dreams. Before inserting the z’s into these areas I was having trouble transitioning one age to the next without making them seem like the same age. An example of this is where before my poem went something like this, “ She kisses my head
And I get sleepy-tired. Waking up feeling tired”.
Adding Zzz’s in between these two areas made it easy to notice the transition from one age area to another age area for the audience reading it. This change I made makes the experience of reading my poem flow better and improves my poem making it easier to read into.
The last major change I made was adding an adult and old man part of the poem. Originally I just wanted this poem to be about a child getting into teen years. After critique by my peers they said it would be good if I added these two phases into my poem. Doing this made my poem connect to more audiences and hopefully even though I have not lived out these phases in my life, I captured some relatable things that most people go through going into adulthood and elderly years. I don’t really have an example to prove how my poem would’ve been if I had not added these two parts to my poem, since I did this change very early on before I could make my child and teenager part long. Adding these made my poem more interesting and Impacts the reader in a way that is simply human and how we all go through different things in life. But we will all always have stress and things in life we all go though. Doing this improved my poem making it more involved and it made it more relatable overall.
Genocide Exhibition
Artist Statement
The genocide I chose to research was the Bosnian Genocide. The main focus of my research was survivor stories. The main aspects I wanted to study was how their experience was during the genocide and what their mental and physical state was after the tragedy. Through this genocide it all started by the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Croats fighting. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence due to a fall of communism in the early 1990’s. War quickly followed between Serbia and these breakaway republics. In 1992 Serbia set out to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnian territory by systematically removing all Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks. These Bosniaks were taken to concentration camps. Women and young girls were raped, boys and men were starved, tortured, and even killed on the spot. In 1993 the U.N. declared that Sarajevo, Goradze, Srebrenica and any other muslim enclaves were to be safe areas protected by U.N. peacekeepers. In 1995 the Bosnian Serbs still went in and the U.N. did little to nothing to stop their attacks, even though they promised to be a “safe zone.” In 2001 they finally caught the former President Milosevic. Many survivors were relieved about his arrest. A few years later in 2008 Radovan Karadzic the commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces was being tried in The Hague on genocide charges.
For my project i'm going to make masks hanging from the ceiling and glue survivor stories to the back of the masks. The main thing that made me want to do this type of project was when a survivor named Selena was very honest throughout her whole interview, and a quote that really stuck out to me was when she said, “We try to go back to Bosnia once or twice every two years. It is never the same place that we left 11 ago. Our family is no longer there.” (Salihovic, 2008) This statement makes me feel like she gets even more hurt mentally going back to her hometown in Bosnia. This quote was one of the main reasons that I began looking deeper into survivor stories because these stories were very detailed and I tried to imagine and put me and my family in their shoes. This made me feel more connected and feel very sorry about their experiences. And another quote that I thought my audience would deeply reflect on was Hasan Nuhanovic’s statement; “The only thing the U.N race keeping troops did in Bosnia did during the war was secure the route for human aid convoys. So basically you feed the people before they get killed. (Rubin, Joe. “Srebrenica: A Survivorâ’s Story Interview With Hasan Nuhanovic.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, Jan. 2006). vivors were during and after the genocide and how they were not okay mentally after the genocide even though they were physically okay. I’m hoping the survivor stories will make people actually realize how their experience was and how it is for them now. I also want them to see the personalization of all the masks because once they read a sign that I will put up that says how many people died after the genocide, they will be told to imagine that the people are masks.
So I feel like I have been pretty engaged with this project because I find lots of interest on these topics and I feel like I did good job picking out the best quotes out of the articles I read. I also really love how I had most of the information I needed for the project, so it makes it easier for me to put my masks together. The audience will be able to learn more about the genocide and they could follow through with Elvisa Avdic’s statement in an interview, “Even if it is too late for us who survived, maybe others can learn from our experiences.” This shows how honest she is about it being too late for those who survived, but how we can all learn from their experiences.
The genocide I chose to research was the Bosnian Genocide. The main focus of my research was survivor stories. The main aspects I wanted to study was how their experience was during the genocide and what their mental and physical state was after the tragedy. Through this genocide it all started by the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Croats fighting. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence due to a fall of communism in the early 1990’s. War quickly followed between Serbia and these breakaway republics. In 1992 Serbia set out to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnian territory by systematically removing all Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks. These Bosniaks were taken to concentration camps. Women and young girls were raped, boys and men were starved, tortured, and even killed on the spot. In 1993 the U.N. declared that Sarajevo, Goradze, Srebrenica and any other muslim enclaves were to be safe areas protected by U.N. peacekeepers. In 1995 the Bosnian Serbs still went in and the U.N. did little to nothing to stop their attacks, even though they promised to be a “safe zone.” In 2001 they finally caught the former President Milosevic. Many survivors were relieved about his arrest. A few years later in 2008 Radovan Karadzic the commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces was being tried in The Hague on genocide charges.
For my project i'm going to make masks hanging from the ceiling and glue survivor stories to the back of the masks. The main thing that made me want to do this type of project was when a survivor named Selena was very honest throughout her whole interview, and a quote that really stuck out to me was when she said, “We try to go back to Bosnia once or twice every two years. It is never the same place that we left 11 ago. Our family is no longer there.” (Salihovic, 2008) This statement makes me feel like she gets even more hurt mentally going back to her hometown in Bosnia. This quote was one of the main reasons that I began looking deeper into survivor stories because these stories were very detailed and I tried to imagine and put me and my family in their shoes. This made me feel more connected and feel very sorry about their experiences. And another quote that I thought my audience would deeply reflect on was Hasan Nuhanovic’s statement; “The only thing the U.N race keeping troops did in Bosnia did during the war was secure the route for human aid convoys. So basically you feed the people before they get killed. (Rubin, Joe. “Srebrenica: A Survivorâ’s Story Interview With Hasan Nuhanovic.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, Jan. 2006). vivors were during and after the genocide and how they were not okay mentally after the genocide even though they were physically okay. I’m hoping the survivor stories will make people actually realize how their experience was and how it is for them now. I also want them to see the personalization of all the masks because once they read a sign that I will put up that says how many people died after the genocide, they will be told to imagine that the people are masks.
So I feel like I have been pretty engaged with this project because I find lots of interest on these topics and I feel like I did good job picking out the best quotes out of the articles I read. I also really love how I had most of the information I needed for the project, so it makes it easier for me to put my masks together. The audience will be able to learn more about the genocide and they could follow through with Elvisa Avdic’s statement in an interview, “Even if it is too late for us who survived, maybe others can learn from our experiences.” This shows how honest she is about it being too late for those who survived, but how we can all learn from their experiences.
Project reflection
When I think about this project I am most proud of how the project came out and how it looked on exhibition night. I am proud of how it came out because I feel like it came out really nice looking and a lot of people found a lot of interest in my masks and the survivor stories on the back.
If I had one more week to work on this project I would make the masks nicer and more realistic looking, I feel like some look really good and others look basic and do work but they could definitely be refined. I would also add a sign that tells people how many people died in this genocide and have a nice poster that says what genocide they are walking into.
I did run into some problems when it comes to making the actual masks, some would crumble, some wouldn't dry very well and would come out deformed, and others would not smooth out no matter how much a sanded them. I dealt with these problems by getting more plaster and smoothing out cracks and crumbly areas on the masks. I also would add to the deformed areas with more plaster making it look more natural and normal. Finally I used mod podge to smooth and make the masks look more smooth.
The most important thing I learned over the course of this project was learning about how genocides work and how these genocides happened and knowing very little to very big details about the Bosnian genocide. I feel like it is very important to learn about things like these because many Americans have not experienced a genocide and are fairly ignorant about these topics and even knowing about this history many countries had with genocide. I feel like it's good to be know about these pieces of history to be informed about the history of other countries and not only know the history parts about america.
If I had one more week to work on this project I would make the masks nicer and more realistic looking, I feel like some look really good and others look basic and do work but they could definitely be refined. I would also add a sign that tells people how many people died in this genocide and have a nice poster that says what genocide they are walking into.
I did run into some problems when it comes to making the actual masks, some would crumble, some wouldn't dry very well and would come out deformed, and others would not smooth out no matter how much a sanded them. I dealt with these problems by getting more plaster and smoothing out cracks and crumbly areas on the masks. I also would add to the deformed areas with more plaster making it look more natural and normal. Finally I used mod podge to smooth and make the masks look more smooth.
The most important thing I learned over the course of this project was learning about how genocides work and how these genocides happened and knowing very little to very big details about the Bosnian genocide. I feel like it is very important to learn about things like these because many Americans have not experienced a genocide and are fairly ignorant about these topics and even knowing about this history many countries had with genocide. I feel like it's good to be know about these pieces of history to be informed about the history of other countries and not only know the history parts about america.