In The process behind featured artist Jasmine Kapadia’s contest-winning Her poetry Words C
aptivated by the simple, no-rules writing style of poetry, Paly senior Jasmine Kapadia has been pursuing the literary craft ever since second grade when she was introduced to writing haikus by her teacher. “I didn’t have to worry about grammar,” Kapadia said. “I could just write and find my line breaks wherever I wanted to. I could, if I wanted to, write in all lowercase; that was allowed.” Kapadia draws her inspiration from an array of sources, including visual artwork, music videos and different fashion styles, but perhaps the most influential thing to her work is her own identity. Through poetry, Kapadia has been able to express her
own identity as a mixed Asian-American woman, often finding herself writing words she didn’t even know she was thinking. “It can be hard to form a solid concept of yourself,” Kapadia said. “For me, writing was a way to give myself a voice and give myself space to work through who I want to be, which parts of which culture I feel most connected to, or maybe if I don’t feel connected to a culture, why.” Submitting her poems to different contests and magazines has been an incredibly rewarding experience for Kapadia, with her work being featured in an abundance of publications. However, the most meaningful of the awards she has received came not from a writing contest but rather a Good Morning America’s list of AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) inspirations. [Previously published in Aurora Review] An email sent to Kapadia revealed she had been have u seen my body? u cracked eggs against the sycamore tree nominated by world-reasked me to pick out the shells with my teeth. take the A train at 10pm, nowned activist and Nobus across the bridge bel Peace prize winner + into the river. the water is always ice cold. crazy how we used to get Malala Yousafzai for her lost here, drown in city lights. u chase me down the sidewalk poetry collection about peanut brittle between ur teeth, stoop under the wonton stall the COVID-19 pandemic breaking ur back contorting on the doorstep. here low-life fairytales come titled “tiger balm cures all to fruition, knife worked nine inches in but the smell trails.” The pulled out six. exorcism. midwives delivering red ink + roaches, baby crawling out recognition was incredibly meaningful to Kapadia, of my throat. tear my corpse apart to see it hit the pavement
“Writing was a way to give myself a voice and give myself space to work through who I want to be.”
leftovers
spider carcasses piled at the church door to be dumped into tsap seui + such a long night.
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