After graduating from high school, some college-preparing students may seek to enjoy as many summer Shore trips as possible before starting the next phase of their education.
However, even after graduation, one Eastern Regional graduate is still writing and working well into the summer heat.
Sophia Ferguson, who graduated this past spring, recently published her first poetry book entitled “To You and the ‘In loves.’”
Ferguson has been working on the book, a collection of approximately 50 contemporary poems, for the past six months. It is now available for purchase in paperback for $8 on Amazon and Amazon Kindle for $2.95.
Ferguson says she was inspired by multiple teachers to write the poetry book over the past several years at Eastern Regional, while also drawing from personal experience as well.
“My junior year [at Eastern] we did ‘The Great Gatsby,’ and we talked about what it was like to be in love. And as a kid, they always tell you that you don’t really know what love is, so I wanted to kind of prove people wrong that you can feel love whenever, it’s your own kind of definition,” said Ferguson.
Flash forward a year later, Ferguson and her classmates started reading and interpreting poetry during her senior year, leading her to want to combine the two in her own definition of what she felt love was and is to her.
“I thought that this was the best way to kind of get it across,” said Ferguson.
Prior to her senior year, she says she’d never tried writing poetry before, however she had always been a fan of reading it. As part of a class project, students were to create a “Poetry Anthology,” creating a collection of 20 or more poems and analyze them, with the last one being an original piece from the student – leading Ferguson to craft her first-ever poem.
After doing so, she quickly got started on the poetry book she now has published and is available for purchase, using themes and taking inspiration from poets she studied during her class project in the months prior.
“One of the poets that was in my anthology was Ruby Kaur, and she talks a lot about relationships and love as a contemporary poet, so she really inspired me to kind of use my literary skills to get across that message,” said Ferguson.
Ferguson cited the help of multiple teachers at Eastern Regional who inspired her to work on poetry and even publish her own work like she did. While at Eastern Regional, outside of the classroom and school projects, she was also able to work with the school newspaper “The Voyager,” and helped edit a piece on a young woman who published a poetry book of her own work before Ferguson did so.
