The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

Anna Yang is a twelfth grader at Notre Dame High School in San Jose and is the 2022-2023 Santa Clara Youth Poet Laureate. Anna’s writing has been published in The New York Times and KQED. Anna spoke with Harker Aquila about her experiences in poetry, and how it relates to her identity and past.

The Poet’s Project: ‘Depths of my mind’

by Felix Chen and Aishani Singh March 16, 2023

Anna Yang is a twelfth grader at Notre Dame High School in San Jose and is the 2022-2023 Santa Clara Youth Poet Laureate. Anna’s writing has been published in The New York Times and KQED. Anna spoke...

An illustration representing various motifs in some of Edgar Allan Poes most famous poems. Many regard Poe as the greatest poet to ever live.

Friday Five: Poe(ms)

by Jonathan Xue, Humans of Harker Profiler March 8, 2023

Edgar Allan Poe died of consumption. But even a century and a half later, his works continue to gnaw at me; their biting twists and subtle nuance are truly captivating. Each poem he writes is layered with...

Ellen Bass is the author of four poetry collections, including most recently, “Indigo,” published in 2020. Bass spoke with Harker Aquila about her experiences reading, writing, and teaching poetry, making a home and a life out of this art.

The Poet’s Project: ‘The magic and mystery of it’

by Felix Chen and Sarah Mohammed January 24, 2023

Ellen Bass is the author of four poetry collections, including most recently, “Indigo” (Copper Canyon Press 2020). Her poems have been published in the New Yorker and the American Poetry Review and...

Upper school mathematics teacher Caren Furtado observes several works of photography and art at the Artstravaganza exhibits. Campus art and writing exhibition Artstravaganza displayed student artwork and literature from the past year.

Artstravaganza arts and writing show exhibits student works and talent

by Alena Suleiman, Assistant A&E Editor May 7, 2022

A gingerly cut wooden butterfly perches on a black stand. A few feet away, crawling vines wrap around the neck of a glossy pine green vase. These are just some of the creations on display at Artstravaganza,...

Zubin Khera (11) and Vivian Bi (11) read writing in the latest issue of the Harker Eclectic Literary Magazine (HELM), which was produced by students and focused on the theme of renaissance this year. HELM often features student-written poetry, creative writing and miscellaneous forms of art.

Poem in your pocket: Celebrating National Poetry Month

by Sydney Ling, Reporter April 30, 2022

It’s hard to define what poetry exactly is. Poetry can be reading Shel Silverstein’s poems in second grade, black-out poetry with sharpies or “I Am” poems. Poetry can be Frank Ocean’s confessionals,...

Rachel Mennies is a poet and the author of The Naomi Letters
 (BOA Editions, 2021) and 
The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press), finds poetry to be a site of tenderness. Her most recent collection explores this tenderness through the epistolary form, as she writes lush letters to an imaginary woman.

The Poet’s Project: How poetry teaches us to be tender together

by Sarah Mohammed, Features Editor April 30, 2022

Rachel Mennies is a poet and the author of “The Naomi Letters” (BOA Editions, 2021) and “The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards” (Texas Tech University Press), which was named a finalist for the...

Estelle Cimino, who visited the upper school campus with the Beat Museum on Wheels, reads a poem from Beat Generation author Ruth Weiss at their speaker event on Feb. 24. The BeatMobile came to the campus for the day to educate about the Beat Generation authors of the 1950s.

Beat Museum on Wheels teaches about Beat Generation at upper school visit

by Sally Zhu, A&E and Lifestyle Editor March 4, 2022

The Beat Museum on Wheels visited the upper school campus on Feb. 24 and stayed throughout the day, setting up a truck outside of Manzanita where students could explore the Beat Generation and also delivering...

Keith S. Wilson, an Affrilachian poet and game designer, sees the world through visual textures. He enjoys experimenting with the physical space of the page when he writes his poems, letting words leap and splay.

The Poet’s Project: ‘I come to video games thinking that they’re equally capable of being art’

by Sarah Mohammed, Features Editor February 27, 2022

Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian poet, game designer and author of “Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love” (Copper Canyon), which was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry. His work...

Writers Advocate officer Sydney Ling (10) listens as Sarah Mohammed (11) provides feedback on a club members piece last Monday during the annual Writer’s Advocate Scholastic Awards writing workshop. “It was a very open and communal space where everyone felt pretty supported and held in their art, which is ultimately what we want to do,” Sarah said.

Students explore poetry and writing at annual Writer’s Advocate Scholastic Awards workshop

by Selina Xu, Reporter November 22, 2021

Five students attended the annual Writer’s Advocate Scholastic Awards writing workshop last Monday at 3:30 p.m in upper school English teacher Jennifer Siraganian’s room, where members reviewed each...

We will not be writing just for no reason, but hopefully we dont necessarily always know why we’re writing, we know only that there is a kind of insistence in language. Poems really do begin with playing, poet Philip Metres said.

The Poet’s Project: ‘I wrote those lines because they were true’

by Sarah Mohammed, Features Editor November 19, 2021

Philip Metres is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an award grant for exceptional creative thinkers to have time and space for their craft, and the author of 10 books, including his most recent collection...

I wrote about my family through very narrative poems, but I grew the most when I met spoken word artists and highly experimental writers doing something Ive never seen before. That was very impactful as a writer myself: to come into contact with new ways of thinking, poet Cathy Linh Che said.

The Poet’s Project: “To see history being made”

by Sarah Mohammed, Features Editor September 19, 2021

Cathy Linh Che is the author of “Split” (Alice James Books), a poetry book that chronicles her experiences with family, identity and childhood. Cathy is the Executive Director of Kundiman, a national...

My role as a poet, as a person in the literary community is to advocate for literature, my own and others’. I think thats an incredible responsibility, and one that I take on and welcome, poet Ruben Quesada said.

The Poet’s Project: “Taking the world apart at its smallest level”

by Sarah Mohammed, Features Editor August 21, 2021

Ruben Quesada is a Latinx poet, critic and community organizer raised in Los Angeles and currently living in Chicago. He is the author of two poetry collections, “Revelations” (Sibling Rivalry Press...

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