Revere High School Picks Freshman Abigail McHugh As New Poet Laureate

Revere High School freshman Abigail McHugh has been writing poetry since she was 11 as a way of expressing her feelings.

Now 15-years-old and with several years of writing poetry under her belt Abby, as she’s known at RHS, heard of a contest the high school was sponsoring to pick RHS’s new poet laureate.

“There was an announcement about the contest and I decided to submit some poems I had,” said Abby. “I just thought it would be a cool way to share my poetry.”

Abby submitted four poems, “Soup”, “Human Body”, “Dead Rat” and “Lavender Scented Deodorant” with the latter being among her favorites.

“The one I presented for the final contest was “Lavender Scented Deodorant”, said Abby. “The poem is mostly about insecurity in a school environment. It’s basically a poem about anxiety, not really being able to function on a normal level because of the anxiety, generally being insecure about who you are in that environment.”

The poem was a hit among the contest judges and two weeks ago found out she was chosen as the school’s new poet laureate.

“There was a brief ceremony during our advisory period and me and two other finalists got to present our poems and then they announced the winner,” said Abby. “I was pretty surprised. I thought I would be just one of the finalists. I didn’t think I would really win. So I was pretty surprised. I didn’t really read poetry as much growing up, I just kind of wrote it. I’d Just write about what I was feeling or just anything I could think of really–like what I was feeling about my life–about morality, mortality or anything that I was really feeling at the moment.”

As RHS’s new poet laureate Abby will have several new responsibilities and is on her way to becoming a serious writer.

“There are a few things I have to do as the high school’s poet laureate,” she said. “Right now I’m basically working behind the scenes on some stuff. I have to plan poetry-related events for school for each semester. Next year, I’m going to write a poem for the graduating class. There’s also some good benefits. I get to take this poetry workshop with a teacher next year and I get to put it on my college resume. So that would be really good.”

While Abby will be busy as the school’s new poet laureate she hopes to maybe someday get her poetry published so a wider audience can read it and begin working on learning to write songs.

“You could say my interest right now is mainly writing poetry but sometimes I am really into music,” said Abby. “I would like to learn how to write a song. I think that would be really interesting. I don’t really have a favorite musician but I just kind of listen to different things that I like.”

Abby added, “In the future I would like to publish a book of some sort”.

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