Engineering major wins top prize as students shine in Giovanni-Steger Poetry Prize

We can never let words be silent. We can never let words be taken away from us. We can never let people because they don't like what we're saying. Shut us up. Tell the ever restless city, the trodden Kobo Streets, the rattling humming subway of the one they'll never meet. I don't think anyone ever really has complete confidence in their own work or feels really like they're cut out for it, but you just keep doing it and keep putting yourself out there and keep writing and reading other people's work as well, and eventually you'll figure it out. And I've traced the bones of a hurricane jungle glimpsing at the shadows of skeletons flitting between the trees. I mute and I' hard to put it in words funny enough. But no, I'm grateful for this opportunity. This is my first time reading something I wrote out loud to an audience. Sometimes I drag my hand through the dangling series, wishing it would wind around my finger like silky fragrant rings. Never underestimate your capability as a writer. I think that a lot of people are afraid of, you know, their poetry, not being good enough, but I think that really all poetry is is a reflection and a thought and an emotion. It just takes patience and sitting down and really working at it. And I think anybody is capable being a poet. Words are the most important things that human beings have, and we must always remember, no matter what the situation, we must always remember to use them.