Pratiti Sarkar

I remember reading The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes in eighth grade and wondering what rare quality one needed to write poetry. All I could do was write cheesy songs and One Direction fanfiction. I found my answer in ninth grade when we were taught Daffodils and Wordsworth had described poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. My life turned upside-down that year due to various reasons and I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression and OCD. By the beginning of tenth grade, I had channelled my overwhelming emotions into poetry.
Over the course of the next year, I wrote sixty poems (in the order that has been used in this collection) and over the summer of eleventh grade I worked towards publishing my debut, Enigma. I was tremendously inspired by writers like Tagore and Bond are known for having published their first books at the age of 16 and 17 respectively.
I feel humbled each time I find friends’ and strangers’ messages asking me to give them a few pointers to improve their writing. I promise to never become one of those stuck-up writers who are too busy to talk to their readers. I am and always will be a lover of the fine arts in all it’s forms and denominations.