Meet your local Youth Poet Ambassador: Rona Wang

With her cheery stride and optimistic smile, Rona Wang is easy to spot in a crowd. Despite her busy schedule, which includes classes at Portland State University, the Lincoln High School senior knows every restaurant, shortcut and quirky store downtown. Thus, so do her poems.

These days, Rona is a Portland Youth Poet Ambassador and has attended Scholastic Art & Writing Nationals at Carnegie Hall. She co-founded Glass Kite Anthology's summer program -- a production “dedicated to the dangerous”. She’s a reader for The Blueshift Journal. Her literature is scattered online, visible on popular blogs such as The Teacup Trail.

But she’s wielded pen like sword her entire life. 

At age four, she wrote a feminist fairytale about a princess saving her father. Illustrated and stapled into a book, the thrill of freshly printed letters became her drug. A decade later, Rona won her first big-time honor from Scholastic. 

The success of her fictitious story sparked more artistry. Websites like Tumblr and Figment allowed Rona to peek into other imaginative minds. She began to experiment with words. 

Friends and family weren't too supportive. Kids at school claimed her poetry wasn't great. Her parents thought creative writing was a waste of time. Publication rejections came as often as acceptances.

Rona snuck to her computer and huddled over the keyboard as late as 3am. She let syllables loose on nights no one would listen. Without grammatical restrictions, necessary elements and the boundaries of prose, Rona found solace in her newfound passion. 

“Poetry can really strip down to what you wanna’ say,” she said. “It's allowed to break more rules.”

The creative writing community swept her in. At the 2014 Iowa Young Writers camp, she was intimidated. However, the storm of short stories and informative classes encouraged her to move forward. She met a young poet from Texas who shared her keen interest in math, a rare find. 

It's true -- not many 17 year-olds can boast accomplishments in both free verse and quadratic equations. This diehard mathlete doesn't write about sciences often, though there is her personal memoir, “Magnitude”. The piece was an equation itself. It featured the dwindling friendship between Rona and another calculus-loving classmate. The nonfiction piece received 1st place in The Sierra Nevada Review’s junior competition. 

Though she enjoys the work of many male writers, like Ocean Vuong and Alex Dang, Rona relates immensely to other female poets. Among her favorites is Lydia Havens, who, like her, is part of the LGBTQ circle. 

According to Rona, “at least half of the CW community is queer”. Like social justice, sexuality is a common writing topic. This applies especially to slam poetry, an area Rona is still exploring. As an Ambassador, she recently shared verbally at a local charity event. Hosted by the Literary Arts Organization, it was her favorite performance to date.

“Slam helped me get out of my shell,” she said. “It helped me gain confidence.”

Regardless, Rona prefers the traditional written method. She's involved in activities at Lincoln that utilize her imagination, many of which we have at Westview -- poetry club and literary magazine, for example.

“In the past few years, [poetry] has made me a better person,” Rona said. “It made me self-aware and forced me to be more heard, as well. It brought out my drive.” 

Now, Rona’s work can be found in well-known journals like Canvas and Germ Magazine. She plans to go further -- one of her goals is to publish a novel before graduating college. 

Until then, Rona’s typing up moments as they come, one expression at a time.

Rona gloriously enjoying a free cup of water.
PC: R. Neogi