Meet your neighbor: Jasmine Davis
Published 8:00 am Monday, March 10, 2014
- Jasmine Davis discusses poetry with media specialist Tammy Mitchell. The two journals on the table contain more than 90 poems Davis has written, “and I have not idea how many are in the pile of notebooks I have at home. It’s about three feet high.”
At Pell City High School, Jasmine Davis is known as the girl with the flower in her hair.
“I wear one all the time,” she said. “It used to be yellow, but now it’s coral. I just feel like it gives me a little spark.”
An aspiring fashion designer and poet, Davis describes her style as “kinda, bold and a little bit eccentric. I love colors. Right now, green is trying to be my favorite color, but it’s always been blue.”
While her fashion sense has always been obvious, her poetic endeavors weren’t widely known until media specialist Tammy Mitchell noticed her reading a thick pink volume in the school library.
“Oh, it’s just poetry,” Davis replied when asked what she was reading.
“Whose poetry?” Mitchell pursued.
“It’s mine.”
“Oh, they’re poems that you like and copied down?”
“No, ma’am,” Davis said. “I wrote them.”
The conversation led to Davis attending the Mid-Winter Writers’ Conference held last month at the Pell City Center. The soft-spoken junior related some things she learned there, explained why she writes poetry, and shared the story of how a magazine article prompted her to write her favorite poem.
Why she writes: “I want to share my thoughts with other people so that they might help them in some way. If the thoughts just stay stuck in my head, they’re not doing any good. If I put them on paper, they’re not inside of me any more.”
When she writes: “I write when I’m happy. Most people think that poetry is depressing. I want to make them see that it isn’t.”
An excerpt from her poem “Adoration’s Brevity:” “Brush from your eyes – a good night’s rest/Travel a greater distance than one’s brain may have gone/Outside of the doors – the answers remained in the palm of our guest/For their thoughts spoke far too loud – for far too long, I’m afraid they were left alone/So eminent it remains – I do enjoy, the blissful curve upon one’s face – grin/When one’s eyes melt into the eyes of another, melted in place – seconds of ten/Must the slightest possibility of another containing any meaning at all remain/Must the adoration be failed to have been met with – one shall gladly refrain.”
About the poem: “There are a lot of emotions in that one. It’s kind of a love poem, but at the same time it’s not. Really, it’s about getting to know someone mentally. I think the mind is the most beautiful thing about a person.”
Some things she learned at the writers’ conference: “There was a lot of good advice about making your writing stronger – tighter, as they say – bringing more maturity to your writing, and embracing your creative side a little more.”
Which writers does she admire: “I always try to read Maya Angelou, but surprisingly, I don’t read a lot of other people’s poetry.”
Her beginnings as a poet: “I started writing poetry in the third or fourth grade. I would have thoughts that I wanted to express, so, not being able to talk in class, I just started writing them out. Ideas for poems still come to me all the time in math class, when they probably shouldn’t.”
Why she chooses verse instead of prose: “If I wrote in paragraph form, I know I wouldn’t look at it again. So who else would? It kind of bores me.”
Her favorite poem from among the hundreds she’s written: “It’s called ’25 Thoughts.’ I read an article – I don’t remember where – that was about how the body is so amazing and what it can do in 30 seconds. One thing is that it can have 25 different thoughts in a 30-second span. So I wrote a poem based on the question, ‘What could I possibly think about in 30 seconds?’”
At PCHS: Davis is a member of the varsity soccer team, Spanish Club, and Diamond Dolls. She has also played percussion and bass guitar in the school’s band program. After school, she works as a server at Big Deddy’s Wings & Barbecue.
After high school: “I’d like to attend Parsons, in New York. It’s the top fashion school in the United States. I want to be a fashion designer and a writer on the side.”
Her favorite subject: English.
Her parents: Regina and Curtis Davis. “My mom and I are talking about and working on getting some of my poetry published.”
How she describes herself: “I think I’m strange but interesting. I think about weird things, and sometimes that comes out in my poetry.”
The guitar-playing poet: “I got my first guitar in 2007. I just played around with it for a year before I started taking lessons, and then I joined the high school jazz band. I like playing jazz. And country.”
Why the poet plays soccer: “I enjoy running. I feel kind of free when I’m running, and that ties in with my poetry. I write about things that make me feel free.”
