A few weeks ago, an email landed in my inbox from Charlotte's inaugural poet laureate, Jay Ward. He said he had been working with a promising young student named Vanessa Hunter, who just a few months ago had been selected to become Charlotte's first youth poet laureate.
We asked if she could produce an original poem for WFAE on whatever she thought Charlotte needed to hear. She stopped by the WFAE studios to record her poem and talk about finding her voice.
Vanessa Hunter: (reciting unity poem)
James Baldwin once said: 'We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.' So I was thinking of doing a unity poem, a "we're all unified" poem. Another, "we all bleed the same" poem. And I realized it's hard to write a unity poem in an ununified nation. I mean, just think — it's hard to write a "we're all in this together poem" when people can't even stomach the truth, and people's stomachs are still empty. And isn't that a hard pill to swallow?
We can't sleep on ideas when there are people that don't have places to rest their heads. If you look through Charlotte right now, you can see the homeless population, and people will think about what drugs that person did before they think of how they got there. And, sadly, that's a point we're too unified on.
We have a drug epidemic. Fentanyl has taken so many lives. But for them, drugs may be the only way to ignore a reality crashing down.
It's hard to have unification when we barely have integration. We know that Black and brown schools are still underfunded, and the ones with funding are still getting screwed over.
How are we to have one nation when we abuse and use and kill off our own? Is that when America was great?
No. Unity can't be brought when, for some, an attempted assassination of a president is an apocalypse, and for others it's Christmas. This is a lack of unity, and it has been deadly.
It does not have to be this way.
We don't have to be this example. An amalgamation of opinions and still respecting them is unity. We have lost the Golden Rule.
We can make community in our intersectionality, intersect this hatred and media-filled madness and turn it into: one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.
Nick de la Canal: That was an original poem performed by teen poet Vanessa Hunter, who joins us now. Vanessa, welcome to "All Things Considered."
Hunter: Thank you. Hi!
De la Canal:
OK. Talk to us about the poem that we just heard. What was going through your mind as you were writing this?
Hunter: So I remember when I first started this poem, we were talking about doing anything. And I was like, OK, anything — so let's start. I want to do something positive, and let's look at unity because that's a very positive subject. And then I kept trying to write the poem, and I couldn't do it. I had nothing to base it off of. And so I started to think, I was like, maybe if I can't write a poem on unity, I might as well write a poem on why I can't write a poem about unity.
De la Canal: What draws you to poetry as a form of writing? And was there ever a specific moment when you thought to yourself, this is something that I want to pursue?
Hunter: It's the freedom of expression. And I think, for me, when I realized that I wanted to do this was after performing for the first time in my sophomore year — and not, like, feeling uncomfortable anymore, and realizing that I can do this. This isn't something that, like, I have to be scared of anymore. And I have a right to speak, and other people have that right to speak.
De la Canal: You're a senior at Julius Chambers High School, and you were just elected student body president. Congratulations.
Hunter: Thank you.
De la Canal: Do you think that this is something you'll continue to pursue?
Hunter: Right now, my plan for the future is to go to college, and I would like to pursue theatrics. I love theater, and I love the arts as a whole, and so I plan to do some form of art because I want to be able to give back to community.
De la Canal: I see this being in your DNA wherever you go.
Hunter: Thank you.
