She expresses her feelings through her poetry
“I probably got my love for writing from my mom. She’s a retired English teacher. I’ve always wanted to write. I remember writing plays when I was young, and having my sister and brothers act in them. In elementary school I won a writing contest for a story about a troll trying to eat a Thanksgiving turkey. The winner was supposed to read the story on the local radio station. But me and my friend were the last two people in the class to get chicken pox, and I wasn’t able to do it. So my mom bundled me up, put me in the car, and turned on the radio so we could listen to my teacher read my story.
“As I got older, my mom and grandmother bought me journals, and I would fill those with all kinds of stories and poetry. When I write poetry, it’s often about things that I’ve experienced or observed out in the world. Like one time, I met this homeless veteran who lived underneath the freeway. He told me how he had lost both his daughters in one day. They were killed by a driver. His oldest daughter was 21, and she died on her birthday. The other child was 16. He had a tattoo of two gravestones on his arm. I noticed that his shoes were all torn up. I had bought some steel-toed boots to do some work at my house. So I went to my car and gave them to him. He tried to thank me, but I told him it wasn’t necessary. Later on, I learned that he had passed away one night out in the cold. People were just walking by, not realizing or even paying any attention to him. It was so sad. So I decided to write a poem about it. I posted it on Veterans Day a few years ago, with the hope that more people would realize what these vets are going through. And that maybe we need to do more. Maybe we need to feel more.”
— Clarissa Fielder (Liberty)
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