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My experience with the Wick family started in my senior year of high school, and I have to admit that it was a life changing experience. First it was the visiting poets from the Teaching Poetry in Schools class, and it was those students that first opened my eyes to poetry and what I was capable of doing with poetry. Before that point in my life I always felt that poetry was something that was untouchable to me, and I had my reasons I believed that but now I think the opposite of what my past self thought.
I don't know where I'd be without poetry now, most likely I wouldn't be going to college at all. I say that because a large portion of my tuition is donated by the Wick Foundation because I placed in the Undergraduate Scholarship Contest, and I have to say that it was all sparked from the visiting poets that were involved with the Wick Foundation. I can still remember the day that David Hassler called me on the phone and told me that I placed in the competition, I was in complete shock that I was being recognized as a poet and let alone winning money for it. After that day I began to look at poetry in a different light and I haven't stopped writing yet.
Then Giving Voice came that same year and for the first time in high school I felt like I found people that I could connect to, fellow poets. Giving Voice is an amazing presentation of so many wonderful poets and the art that they are capable of, and I was honored to be in the show at all. And thankfully with the help of David Hassler I'm now in the Teaching Poetry in Schools class and I'm enjoying it more that I'd ever imagine. Maybe it's because I'm teaching something that I really love, with the help of WICK, or maybe it's because I feel I'm giving something back to the community that is so important to me now. When I walk into those classrooms I feel that I'm obligated to tell everyone that poetry can change your life if you let it, and great things can happen if you keep on writing and I believe that I'm living proof of that.
Like I said before I don't really know where I would be without the Wick Foundation, but thankfully I don't have to because of the wonderful benefits it supplies to young and blossoming authors of future generations.
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