DWR Award Poetry Finalist Rae Holston

This week’s Writer Wednesday is Rae Holston from Detroit. She’s a college student majoring in English. She speaks several languages fluently, but her love language happens to be poetry. She’s been writing poetry since the second grade. 

“I have a lot of love for my journals because they are my friends, my first loves, the things that speak to me when no one else can,” she says.

Rae took 3rd place in the poetry category at the  2022 DWR Awards for her poem, “A Letter from an Overthinking Lover.” Read more about her below!

What is your favorite part of the writing process?

Good question! My favorite part about the writing process is feeling it. We value the words and the structure these days way more than the feeling behind those words. If we spend so much time worrying about how “pretty” our words look on paper, or how structured they should be based on what we learned from professors and past critics, we lose the feeling we felt when we were originally working on it in the very first place. My absolute favorite part about writing is feeling every emotion and experiencing those moments I talk about.

What does your writing workspace look like?

My writing workspace used to be a small little desk in the corner of my dorm room surrounded by Christmas lights and candles that I used to pay ungodly amounts for because they were either limited edition or just seasonal (or maybe they mostly smelled like cake...cake candles are lovely)! Now my writing workspace looks more like a thick brown journal from Barnes and Noble, covered in music notes that I have no clue how to read, and I bring it everywhere I go just in case I see a person I want to write a poem on, or a situation, or even hear a word in particular out of a conversation that I jot down for my writing session later that night. Some days I will drive to a pretty space and write for hours while taking in the scenery, but as a full-time teacher and college student applying to graduate school, that does not happen as often as I would like for it to anymore.

What do you enjoy most about writing poetry?

The thing I enjoy most about writing poetry has got to be putting my experiences on paper. To be honest, I used to bury myself in work for years because I felt I had nothing else. I had no memorable experiences that did not start off with me mentioning work, I had no friends near me that enjoyed the same things I did, I had nothing but the pen and textbook for so long, I felt like that is all I knew. That is until I started living. Certain experiences would happen whether good or bad and instead of picking up a textbook, my journal became my best friend. I would see so many things and remember so many emotions I felt from my past, and instead of doing something rather negative to cope, I used my words to feel again. Then when I let my friends and family read my pieces, I noticed that they would say they felt the same things or were going through the same things and told me to keep writing because it helped them. I guess in a sense, helping people by relating to them is the sweetest thing in poetry and writing in general.

What is your favorite non-writing hobby?

Ooooh, I have quite a few of them now! For starters, I know you said non-writing but my main thing is journaling, haha! I just love that but a non-writing hobby for real, I love hockey! I play it from time to time, I watch basketball all the time and I am trying to get into baseball now. I enjoy meeting new people and listening to new music, sometimes going to a party or two (pre-covid times, of course), and just enjoying life in ways I never really did before.

What is your favorite piece of writing advice?

There is no exact definition of what perfect writing looks like, so do not let someone tell you that you cannot write. You will always have negative critics that are too afraid to write what they really feel and if you worry so much about what they will say that may negatively affect you and your writing, you will forever be chasing after the things that you think they will like instead of writing what you truly feel. Do not sugarcoat how you feel. It is okay to write raw emotion in any form, worry less about the structure and more about if this is what you really feel in your mind and heart. You cannot appeal to everyone and that is okay, but if you remain true to yourself and your writing, someone is always bound to take a read.

What writing projects are you currently working on?

I just published my first book “Iced Coffee In An Uber,” and I am quite excited about that, but for now, I think I am focused on just journaling and writing new pieces whenever I feel a specific emotion or am put in a situation that hits me differently. I have been worrying less and putting less pressure on myself to get something out and the less I do that, the more ideas I am able to come up with and the more time and emotion I can put into it without it feeling so rushed. I am thinking about writing another book one of these days, but I want to take some time and put my all into the next book before I push it out to the eyes of others! :)

Follow Rae on Instagram at @Aint.rae.