KERRY O’SULLIVAN, 18

Kerry O’Sullivan is from Dublin, Ireland. She started writing when she was 12 years old and has found her confidence and strength through putting pen to paper. She mainly writes poetry, both spoken word and traditional. She focuses on the political and personal to try and make sense of her world through words.

O’Sullivan has had poems published numerous times through supplements in The Irish Times for youth writing created by Fighting Words, a creative writing nonprofit with which she regularly volunteers. She has performed at Lingo, a Dublin-based spoken word poetry festival and also volunteers with children in hospital as a play volunteer. She was the senior public relations officer of her student council and ran her school newspaper, providing both her and other students with a platform to voice their opinions and feel heard.

Through her writing, O’Sullivan became involved in politics, specifically the successful Repeal campaign in Ireland. During May of last year, she canvassed her area every night and spoke at public meetings and political rallies most weeks. This allowed her to see the power of words and the real-life impact of writing when changing someone’s perspective on an important issue.

Now that she has finished secondary school, O’Sullivan hopes to do more to tackle global issues such as climate change, as well as Ireland-centric problems such as the housing crisis. She feels it is vital to not waste the opportunities that she has been given in her life. O’Sullivan plans to study European and Middle Eastern languages and cultures in Trinity College, Dublin. Afterwards, she aims to do humanitarian work and transition into the diplomacy field.

Luck

by Kerry O’Sullivan

You are not lucky.

As if some cosmic force celebrates each of your golden breaths

An entity

Marked by milestones,

Marked by your community.

You are not lucky,

Though you wear a cross proudly round your neck every day

And see the scarved girl that’s your age

Sneered at by strangers

As if their contention

With her existence

Is their daily routine,

As casual as drinking a cup of lukewarm tea.

You are not lucky

Though your days have been perfumed

With privilege

Felt only by those born into

The culture they’re living in.

And you anticipate allowances and freedom and welcome

Still refuse to grant it to children of corruption

You are not lucky,

and you don’t cling to your culture like a safety blanket,

a haven when uprooted.

Thrown from everything you know and

Have nothing left

But

The words on your lips

The dance on your hips

Music you remember reverberating in each ear,

Days and nights punctuated with prayer.

The certainty of what each season would bring

Who you would see and how you would do anything

To be around the familiar,

The syllables that you’ve heard from before

You could even speak yourself.

Perhaps bad luck makes us

The accidental perpetrators

But bad luck does not make us sit back and take it

Sit back and watch the faces on our TVs

Faces in these magazines.

No, you are not lucky

And you should not be taught so.

Rather, you have been born

Into a society

That protects you through

The systematic hatred of

The opposite of you.

You are not lucky.

You are not lucky

Because you are guilty.