Life According to Your Favorite Drinks: Told in Three Stages
by Megan Johnson (Second Place—Poetry)
Told in Three Stages can be found within the three selected drinks. I based each one off of important trends I’ve seen reflected in both my own life, as well as my friend’s lives. I look at each beverage with both fondness and bitterness, but I’ve found adding an excessive amount of vanilla to an iced coffee has made it my favorite of the three.
My writing process is a lot less poetic. I don’t sit down to write poetry and pretend like after some extensive soul searching I have beautiful art left on a page. Instead, there are scribbles, coffee stains, doodles, and pages of absolute nonsense that I get to sort through to find the good stuff. The urge to write usually crashes into me at one to four in the morning, when I’m left alone with my thoughts and too much caffeine. The editing comes much, much later. Publication has not changed much of my process, and instead only added a bit more pressure to not procrastinate on the editing part. I’ve found that there is value in sharing your words, no matter how emotional, boring, or personal you think your words might be. Writing is a perfect alternative to speaking, one of my least favorite things to do, as well.