Jason White
Bio
Jason White is a father, a grandfather, knowledge seeker and sharer. Jason is the owner of Growth Positive Consulting where he puts his fundraising and management skills to great use. He is a writer, a woodworker, and a philanthropist.
Stories (59/0)
For the Passion of Poetry
When I was fourteen, I fell into poetry through my grade nine English teacher. Closer to the beginning of the school year we had a poetry unit, and the assignment was to create and submit at least ten poems. My first inclination was to take a zero on that assignment. I had written some things, but I thought they wouldn’t be good enough to share. This mindset of not being good enough was cultivated through the daily pain I felt in my home. The pain I did everything possible to hide from the outside world. I completed my assignment with fifteen poems that I wrote over a three-day period. On the day when I was to hand it in, I left it in my bag and told my teacher it wasn’t done yet. At the end of that period, she asked me to stay behind for a moment. She confronted me by saying she doesn’t buy my story, that she thinks I am a naturally talented writer and was looking forward to reading what I had to say. I am still not certain what changed my mind, but I pulled my work out of my bag and handed it to her. To which she simply said, “thank-you, see you tomorrow”. I left her class still afraid of what she would think of what I wrote. To this day, I still am not even sure what was on those pages. I went to class the next day, then the next, then the next without any word on my assignment. The anxiety was growing to an intolerable level. The day after she began the class by handing out our poetry assignment, I flipped my work over nearly ready to pass out because I was holding my breath and saw A+ You Have an Old Soul. I didn’t even know what that meant, but it must have been good because I got an A+. Again, she asked to see me for a moment after class and said that she cried while reading my work and asked me if I knew who Leonard Cohen was. I said yes, of course. He was one of my favorite musicians. Then she told me I write like him. I told her I was surprised that I got such a good mark because I knew nothing about poetry and have never read a poem in my life. She just smiled at me and said I earned it. I learned two things that day:
By Jason White3 years ago in Poets