Chloe Wu was a freshman when English teacher Terence Kitada first instructed her English 9A class to open their notebooks and write poetry. This was the beginning of Wu’s poetry journey, and inspired her to write her first piece, “Magnificence of the First.”

“One day, I just had a spiral about how short life is and how insignificant each life is in the grand scheme of things,” she said. “The thing about poetry is that it’s very representative of raw thought, because not a lot of people think in full paragraph prose, but many people think in fragments.”

After reading it, Kitada advised her to submit it to competitions. So, Wu entered the Palo Alto Students  Foundation Poetry Competition and won first place with her first draft.

“I was like, ‘Wow, huh, it’s kind of cool, yeah, poetry could be my thing,’” she said.

Wu then went back and revised, editing out some parts that she thought were too personal and changing some of the wording.

Wu looked to craft a poem that encompassed the truest form of self-expression before submitting to the Scholastic Art and Writing, winning a Gold Key, the highest award available regionally.

“In poetry, how you express things is very specific,” she said. “You can change a word, and the implications are all changed. I’ve written more poetry because I realized it’s very easy — once I have a spark — to dump a bunch of stuff out, and it’s a really good way of expressing the stuff that has been going on in my head.”

With “Magnificence of the First,” her spark arose from her internal dialogue, while other poems of hers have come from conversations as simple as those that she shares with her friends during lunch.

“These sparks usually become pieces of poetry because they change something about how I view the world, or they delve into a bit of perspective that I originally had that I wasn’t very clear about before or I have a new way of seeing it,” she said.

As an exercise, Wu engages in “five-minute poems,” where she looks around, finds one word and gives herself five minutes to write a short poem about it.

“Generally these five-minute poems are less deep in terms of messaging than the ones I actually take a chunk of time to write as a whole, but they are a good way to practice the craft,” she said.

As she progresses in her writing career, Wu hopes to shift to a wider range of topics outside of herself. For those interested in writing, Wu advises to be very reflective and add a personal touch to each poem.

“Start by being more self-reflective and observant of everything else,” she said. “When senses (are) sharper it tends to lead tomore of those sparks and once you have those sparks, it’s very easy to write.”

Sophomore Marie Frank steps into N-106 every Monday, where she helps build a community of writers who are passionate about a wide range of topics, whether it’s on the latest politics or the trending Olympics opening ceremony. Frank is the secretary of the Gunn student magazine “The Chariot” — one of the five publications on campus — which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this year.

“I started going to ‘The Chariot’ last year, in ninth grade,” Frank said. “I got to learn a lot more about writing, discussions and research. I thought it would be cool that if I were able to become a part of something like this, I could also help others find the same thing I (enjoy).”

Being a regular contributor to “The Chariot” has taught Frank how to write about several different topics, and the flexibility of each publication cycle allows her to be creative with what she wants to write about. One of Frank’s favorite articles she has contributed to The Chariot was a deep dive into the fentanyl crisis in California.

“I co-wrote (the article) with one of my friends, who’s also in ‘The Chariot’,” she said. “Our search history after that was very interesting. It was also a pretty huge insight and we had fun panicking over the deadlines.”

By taking on a leadership role last semester, Frank has learned how to effectively communicate with others through responsibilities like taking charge of the publication’s email string and leading meetings. The club is always working to expand its staff of writers and graphic artists, advertising mainly through word-of-mouth at events such as the annual club fair or freshmen orientation.

“There aren’t a massive amount of people (that attend), but we all come from different grade levels,” Frank said. “We talk about random things, mostly related to ‘The Chariot,’ sometimes not. It’s really nice.”

Frank also highlights the importance of student perspectives on current events and how “The Chariot” allows any student to form their own opinion through writing stories.

“I think that this year I’m going to try to focus more on social and cultural (issues),” she said. “I think that with so much going on around the world, (people) should take time to focus more on those things.”