UCF Freshman Shelby Birch has a passion for poetry and is hoping to share that passion with other students
“I started writing poetry when I was in the 6th or 7th grade,” Birch said. “And I got into it because I was mainly an introvert and I had a lot of emotional issues and problems ‘cause you know middle school is like your awkward years. So, to cope with like what I was dealing with, I would just write poems and it eventually grew into something bigger.”
Birch, along with the help of fellow poets Daph Fenaud and Sapphire Huie, is set to bring a new poetry club called S.P.I.T. (Student Poetry Initiating Thought) to UCF. However, if it wasn’t for her earlier years, Birch wouldn’t have had the courage to venture into new territory here at UCF.
Birch says she began dabbling in poetry during her early middle school years to help deal with the stress and various problems that school brought her.
“You know when you’re like 11, 12, 13, body image, I was never the pretty girl,” Birch said. “I never had a boyfriend, no one ever liked me and I had like a perfectionist problem, so everything had to be right. I had to have straight A’s and when I didn’t, I’d just beat myself up about it.
“Just fitting in was the issue. But, I just felt better after I wrote it out.”
Birch continued developing her poetry talents and when she got to high school, she was able to participate in her first poetry slam in ninth grade. A poetry slam is a competition where people present their pieces and are judged on their writing on a scale of one to ten. At this competition, Birch would meet someone who would play a large role in her poetry career.
A woman named Blu Bailey was one of the judges at Shelby’s poetry slam. That day allowed them to meet and ultimately for Bailey to take Birch on has her mentee. Birch credits her with guiding her though many aspects of life including being the best poet she can be.
“I’m so incredibly proud of her,” said Bailey. “To know all the troubles she’s had to overcome and to be where she is now is truly amazing. There’s nothing that girl can’t do.”
However, with all that Birch had accomplished in high school, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to continue being active in the poetry community when she got to UCF.
“I wasn’t sure if she’d continue with it or not because of how much time she had to put into it in high school,” Birch’s best friend of three years Torian Greenaway said. “But the thing about Shelby is when she loves something and believes in it, she really will dedicate herself to it.”
When Birch first arrived at UCF, it actually was her intention to tone down on her poetry in order to give herself the time to focus on other organizations and her course work. However due to numerous people requesting her to perform at various venues throughout campus as well as her realization that the spoken word community at UCF was lackluster, Birch decided to make it her personal mission to make poetry a more prominent fixture on campus.
Through venturing out into different organizations, Birch met Fenaud and Huie. Fenaud and Hue are two UCF students who also shared Birch’s vision of livening up the Poetry community here at UCF.
“I had been thinking of starting up something and when Shelby reached out to us to make it happen, it was perfect,” Huie said. “I’m really excited for what’s in store next year.”
Birch describes club S.P.I.T. as an organization that will allow students to come together and express themselves through the arts.
“If people treat this as seriously her, it could be really great,” Birch’s boyfriend Raleigh Mosely said. “She described her poetry making experience to me as like having a baby; it takes time to birth her work. If people approach it with that same passion, it could really be a success.”
Look out for Club S.P.I.T. Fall 2013!
