Everything Is Pink

Winning Haiku for our June 2016 Haiku Contest - Summer

Interview with Jessica Knight, winner of our June 2016 Haiku Contest

• Can you tell us a little about yourself?
• How long have you been writing poetry and what got you started?
• Share with us a fun or interesting fact about yourself.
• Where do you see the future of poetry considering the rapid changes in technology, communication and how we spend our free time?

You asked to know a little about myself, I'm nineteen and begun writing poetry when I was sixteen. Although I had come across different styles of poetry before, I had never understood poetry until I studied it in my English literature class. At the time, the poems we looked at were forced on to us as material we had to learn for our final exams. However, I don't feel poetry is something that can be taught. You can be shown how to analyze a poem, and told how to respond in a classroom. But I believe reading poetry should be personal and self-appreciated. Many of my peers in school have since taken a dislike to poetry due to this. However, in reading poems such as 'Out of the Blue' and 'Mametz Wood' I found I had a love for conflict and WWII poetry and continued from there. Nowadays the advancements in technology can give us so many opportunities. I can understand why many would feel with so many online distractions that something like poetry is being less and less a part of our culture, but I have to disagree. Authors now have a global stage to post and publish their work, and receive international feedback. With digital storage we now have the luxury of searching for and finding almost all written poetry, and having that unlimited immediate exposure which a local library just cannot match. I'll admit I'm at a bit of a loss at what to say about myself. My favourite themes in poetry are love and lessons. And I have a black cat called Raven.

Poetry Contests - All Winning Poems