By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Thomas Long didn’t take to poetry right off.
When he was introduced to poetry in sixth grade, he didn’t see the point. “I really felt it was weird. It felt forced and unnatural,” he said in a recent telephone interview.
And in seventh grade he even put his feelings about verse into verse, and submitted it to the Bowling Green Women’s Club Writing Contest. “It was about how poetry was not important and stupid to write.”
The poem won an award.
The next year, he took on a specific form of poetry, haiku, explaining in the form of a haiku “what an ineffective way of communication” it was.
That haiku won.
He credits his middle school language arts teacher Meg Vostal with planting the seed of his interest in poetry, though he didn’t appreciate it back then.
Then in Kelsey Howald’s ninth grade English class he was introduced to writing in rhyme and meter.
Before he was writing in free verse “coming up with it whole cloth,” he said. “That doesn’t really work for a person like me.”
But writing in forms and regular meter “felt more comfortable,” Long said. “I started writing poetry I liked.”
Now a high school senior, Long has won several awards in the Ohio Poetry Association. He received first place in the “Common Threads” journal, sonnet, and sense of place categories as well as honorable mention for the David Francis Smith Award.
Those poems draw on his longing for a sense of serenity and quiet. Ordinarily there’s ”so much flying around in my head.”
Then Long, a member of the BG high cross-country team, goes running at night. He describes it in one of his winning poems.
“Through verdant hallways I explore
“A tranquil world with earthen floor
“My creeping thoughts and worries cease
“Between the trees I’m steeped in peace”
During those runs lines of verse will come to him. When he gets home, he writes them out and develops them into poems.
“I’m able to put words on paper because of the format, because of the structure,” Long said.
He started researching poetry contests to enter, as something to add to his college applications.
He spied the notice for the Ohio Poetry Association competition on the office door of Sarah Caserta, his AP English teacher.
She encouraged him to enter. “It seemed like the perfect opportunity,’ Long said. “It worked out pretty well.”
Long is the son of Thad and Debbie Long, and has two older siblings Connor and Rachel.
Poetry is one of his talents. He’s a familiar face on local stages with Horizon Youth Theatre and with the Bowling Green High School Drama Club.
Long, a percussionist, was also in band, playing bass drum in marching band. He tied his love of rhythm with his affinity for meter in poetry.
He also sang in the choir and the madrigals.
And Long said he just loves academics, whether history, math, English, or science. He even likes the challenge of taking standardized tests.
That, he said, informed his choice of colleges. He hopes to attend a small liberal arts college. He’s been accepted to the College of Wooster and to Middlebury College in Vermont. He’s still awaiting word from Bowdoin College in Maine. He’s also been accepted into Bowling Green State University.
“I don’t know what I want to study, so they seem like places to explore different things and become a more well-rounded person,” he said. “That’s important to me.”
He did receive a theater scholarship to Wooster.
Long started acting with Horizon Youth Theatre at age 8 and has continued through high school, both with the high school troupe and with Horizon. He’s also co-leader of the improv troupe.
“Acting has been one of the most formative parts of my childhood and identity in general,” he said. “I just really enjoy being on stage and performing. I like seeing people laugh and smile.”
More important, he said, it’s about “empathy and knowing how to put yourself into another person’s body, and head.”
This allows the actor to experience “how they would feel about certain situations. It’s a fantastic method of connection.”
That’s been true on a personal level as well. “That’s where I developed a lot of my friendships. That’s where I developed my social awareness. I just love the way it helps me connect with other people.”
Though Long, who has won several Ohio Community Theater Association awards, wants to continue acting in college, he does not plan to major in theater.
Long said he was absolutely certain he will not pursue poetry in college, either, though he knows he’ll continue to write for personal pleasure.
“I don’t want to write to publish,” he said. “I write because it makes me happy and because I like sharing it with others.”
