If you had told her that she would come to love poetry so much when she first began writing it, she would have never believed you. After all how could she? Poetry had only been an outlet, something to do when she was feeling extremely emotional. Now at the age of 19, poetry has become more than a voice for aspiring biochemist Shannon Beaton, in fact it has become an integral part of her life.

Shannon was born on May 17, 1997, and is the eldest of three children, having a younger sister and brother. Being from Berbice and living close to a river, she spent most of her childhood in the countryside either climbing trees and swimming or playing on a farm and being connected to nature. Her childhood adventures with her close knit family played a major role in developing her emotional side.

From a young age, Shannon was always the most empathetic of her family- an extended family that is quite large.
“I was a bit of a tomboy but not the tomboy in the traditional sense; I wasn’t that rough,” she said in an interview recently. “I was always in some tree or playing with farm animals but I was always emotionally connected to everything around me,” she stated. “I appreciated the little moments and I felt everything that went on around me.”
It was this heightened sense of awareness that would lead her to poetry in her later years. She would begin to outgrow the tomboyish nature as she transitioned from primary to secondary school. It started with her developing a love for reading and a love for expressing herself through the arts and as she entered secondary school at Queen’s College, she traded the trees and rivers for her notebook and pen.

Finding poetry
Like all art forms, poetry is born in moments of intense emotional pain, and in Shannon’s case this was no different. “…when I first started writing poetry in my head it wasn’t even poetry; I was just writing down how I felt.”
“That time,” as she calls it, was when she was in third form at the age of 15 and she was experiencing a dark period in her young life. “I was feeling overwhelmed, I was battling with a lot of demons throughout that time and that’s when it started. I just put pen to paper and let it all out.”
The way poetry helped her and shaped who she became was summed up in one sentence: “Poetry for me was an avenue where if you had issues it was a way to vent and release emotions.”

From that point, she never looked back and to this date has written more poems than she could remember. She admitted that when she first realized that it was poetry as well as it was good when she started getting responses from those close to her.
“In my head I thought that what it wasn’t that good but I would hear that it is good and I started to write more.”
Since that starting point four years ago, she has continued to write and poetry has helped her to not only voice the thoughts in her head but to be a voice for others.

The Poetry Process
Since becoming a more confident writer over the years, her writing process has evolved. First she was limited to only being able to write based on an emotional experience or an event she witnessed, but now Shannon can write poetry on the spot using words or phrases given to her.
I was witness to this when I gave her a word, and on the spot she did it, taking only a few minute to sort her thoughts. The word was “Wanderlust,” a strong desire to travel. She wrote this within minutes and it was quite interesting to see her mind work, to see her eyes sparkle and her pen flow as she wrote another line.

“It moves and I follow, the way the streams run from me, the way the songs of creatures so different can harmonize into a beautiful symphony that’s never the same.”
“Oh to listen to it forever, but oh to never hear it again. Oh to lose the wondrous mountaintop views, or the deep-water horizons.”
“So I must, before it’s lost to me, travel to the dark depths and experience the early morning glory of the rebirthed day.”
“So I’ll travel, doesn’t matter where I start, my mind is open to see it all”
“This wanderlust oozes over me, this wanderlust seeps out, this wanderlust pushes me on.”

Future Plans
Education has always been important to the former Queen’s College Student, who scored good grades when she wrote both CSEC and CAPE.
For her, becoming a Biochemist was an easy decision. “I can’t see myself as a doctor, my heart is too big and when giving a family bad news I’d probably cry with them,” she said with a laugh.
Shannon also plans to continue writing poetry and secretly dreams of the day when her poems become published. The 19 year old with the beautiful soul and inspired pen is set to accomplish her dreams.