"...[Poetry must be]...something I can feel
intimately close to; there must always be emotion." – Natasha Johnson.
Natasha Johnson, born June 1, 1990, is a poet cultivated by pure, passionate expression. She speaks of harvesting poetic inspiration from nearly everything, finding the richest field to be life itself.
Natasha suggests that the artist should avoid being distracted when searching for writing ideas. And it is in her room at home where she gathers creative inspiration in the midst of boredom and wistfulness. She addresses this in her poem, "One Night in the World War Theatre", published in the 2007 edition of the Mad Hatter (a publication for the gifted and talented). I love her line: "The dark sentiments sing a song / Of sweet simple melancholy" (11-15).
Much like the poet Seamus Heaney, Johnson’s poems deal with the senses, all bundled together to reflect the yearnings of the soul; her poem "The Stars Open Early" (The Mad Hatter, 2007) whisks the reader away to an excitingly vivid world. When she says, “The stars open early/to the bright snap of red autumn/ and the chirping of wet, bitter leaves, she is exploring life. It is a synthesis of her observations that reveal an eagerness for the beauty of autumn. There is no set of rules intending to be conveyed, but there is a sense of conviction. Natasha prefers touch and taste in the realm of the third eye, and impression as an alternative to tangibility. Her style is summarized as order from unorganized emotion reinterpreted as dynamic, fluid feeling. She thinks that a poet should “stay true to what they're feeling”.
Natasha Johnson will be pursuing a double major in English and Physiology at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.