Every day after school, junior Brian Miller zooms across campus on his trusty electric scooter and makes his way to the Paly wrestling room. When Miller speaks, legs dangled over the legs of a round wooden stool, his eyes are focused, with a warm earnest gaze. To Miller, finding time to slow and simply exist in the movement is key to understanding yourself.
Miller started his writing journey around the end of seventh grade, the same time he began wrestling. He expressed his gratitude toward the ability to create poetry and how it shaped his life.
“Once I learned certain techniques behind it [writing poetry], I was able to really kind of make it my own, which was something that I was very grateful for,” Miller said. “Poetry has always kind of been in the peripheral of my life, and so whenever there’s a moment where I’m either feeling intense emotions or there’s a lot of thoughts, it always feels best to get it out in poetry form.”
Miller said his middle school English teacher Craig Bark helped shape his work and his growth as a writer.
“He [Bark] forced creativity out of you in a way where he allowed for new and different ideas to come out, and for you to feel comfortable expressing that,” Miller said. “By creating a classroom environment that was so open and expressive, you’re really able to kind of stretch that muscle of creativity, to stretch that muscle of like going out of the norm, to create true feelings and true emotions and to form it into a whole concept, like a poem.”
Miller said that while it sounds cliche, he wants to spread positivity with his works.
“I think we’ve gotten to the point where it’s almost cringy to be positive, or it’s cringy to care,” Miller said. “I don’t understand that at all. I can’t stand for that, because if we become a society of people who lack empathy or who don’t care or lack basic compassion, we will not be able to grow and support those that need it.”
According to Miller, his writing process can be split into four parts: think, build, write, and revise. Every poem begins with Miller sitting with himself, either spending time with his thoughts alone in silence or immersed in the midst of an experience. He then uses this time to organize his building emotions and ideas. Once his mind reached a tipping point, he recorded himself onto a blank document. After Miller has a draft, he revises and reads his work multiple times before calling it done.
According to Miller, poetry is more free than other forms of writing, and that freedom can also be found in wrestling.
“In wrestling, there’s a whole bunch of different styles, but at the end of the day, you’re going to go up against whoever lines up across from you, and so each battle is you versus you,” Miller said. “With poetry, you’re fighting a lot of those internal battles, and you’re getting it out for other people to view and interpret. I’ve always found it very, very adaptable and very just freeing.”
Miller said writers and other creatives shouldn’t feel discouraged from pursuing their art when they see other “better works” and to never stop trying.
“Take that risk of being out there, and to take that risk of being creative means there is inevitably going to be human error, there’s going to be people that don’t like it,” Miller said. That’s a part of being human. The arts, especially literature, is not measured in better or worse, because there’s so many categories, there’s so many avenues, there’s so many different ways to express yourself.”
Read Brian Miller’s poetry here: https://inkliterarymag.org/1374/poetry/its-hard-to-hate-someone-you-understand/
