Most teenagers don’t swoon while comparing Shakespeare to Wilfred Owen’s meditations on the violence of war. But George Mason High School junior Annie Castillo isn’t most teenagers. “When I read Owen’s work next to [Shakespeare’s] great professions of love, I think, My god, this is poetry!” says the Falls Church native. Last summer, in recognition of her own work, Castillo received the country’s highest honor for young poets when, during a ceremony at the Library of Congress, she was named one of five National Student Poets by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Her ambassadorship runs until August 2018. Who are her muses? Castillo credits past teachers, along with her 87-year-old grandfather, Jorge Castillo, who has often sent her poems and read verse to her over the phone. “I think [poetry] has been a secret passion of his all along,” she says.
An excerpt from Annie Castillo’s poem “On the Discovery of Dinosaurs,” courtesy of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers:
I used to think of the dinosaurs who
became bones and shadow.
Now I think of the ones who
unearthed the bones
so time’s raw sunlight
could touch those ghosts.
For more information, visit artandwriting.org/national-student-poets-program.