Urban

 Ashley Walker: A poet who uses her voice By River Damon Ashley Walker is 18 and a senior at Lincoln Park High School. I interviewed her about her high school experience freshman through junior year. Q: What was the hardest thing about high school during those years? A: Personal life got in the way of academic life. I got sick freshman year and had to progress through school with that illness. Q: What was the hardest year in high school for you? A: Junior year was the hardest. I battled with health and family issues. There were also new academic standards. Q: What college are you planning on going to when you graduate? A:  I want to go to Spellman in Atlanta because it's a prestigous academy, and there's good weather. Q: What do you want to be when you grow up? A:  I want to a journalist and a motivational speaker. Youth are lost for words and don’t know how to shape their voice. I want to give them what I never had. When I got older I found my own voice. Q: What do you do as a after-school activity? A: I was in the choir at Lincoln Park. I dropped choir and am now a poet. I go to YouMedia [at Harold Washington Library] and do poetry there and at my church youth ministry called Soul.

Ashley Walker rises about it all

By Corrina Qualls

        “My greatest accomplishment is knowing that when someone calls me with a problem I can help them solve it. It’s not about the recognition but the knowing that they got through a storm,” says Ashley Marie Barbara Walker.

        Many would think that those are too many names, but these names help to make her who she is. She was given the name Marie from her mother’s mentor and Barbara from her aunt.

She knows the definition of a struggle. Diagnosed with rheumatic heart disease at age 11, her life began to change. Yet she didn’t let this stop her from achieving whatever she wanted to.” I like to dabble in everything,” she says. “ I love writing, singing, dancing, reading, art and almost anything you can think of.”

                    When asked what she sees, hears and knows she replied: “ I’ve seen people die, I’m always hearing about teenage girls who get pregnant and have to drop out of school, and I know how hard it is to live with health defects.” This really touched me because I can relate to each of these things.

      “Don’t let your faults bring you down but let them make who you are. Always try to be better than your best.” These are the mottos of Ashley, to not let her struggles or what she considers her flaws to actually be flaws but things that make her stand out. You can see this is her everyday life at Lincoln Park High school. Where she uses each and everyday to try and live her life not by what she was given at birth but by her dreams of making her life meaningful.

I hear

I hear Chi-Town singing

Heed the laughter

Crackle of iniquity ridiculing reminiscent

Residents of the Robert Taylors

Cabrini colonist and..

Inhabitants of the Iki’s- Continuing acts of violence

“Yo, yo” inducted into everyday activity

And intrinsic proclivity

Wailing of sirens fighting the community

Listen to the feet running from the screams

The everlasting nightmares turn to reality

A formality

Has become the normality

For Chicago isn’t Chicago without the acidic rain

That falls upon our window panes

No other city is quite the same

From the pits of the hellish hood kids strive  for fame

The flames, Chicagoans try to tame

As the man laughs at our wanting for change

And I stand on the mountain high

Listening to the screams,

The crying,

The sighs…

The beat of liberated souls are ringing

Chicago, I hear you singing

-Urban