Faith DeRuiter
My name is Faith DeRuiter, and I’m a senior Media and Communications student at Arcadia University, which seems almost unreal to say. My concentration has been a mix between screen media and multimedia publishing, with a heavy leaning towards writing classes. Writing in many different forms has always been a love of mine, from trying to write my first novel at eight years old to become fascinated with poetry in high school. It’s only fitting that my thesis turned itself into a writing project, since I feel that’s an accurate representation of myself.
It started with a vague idea: what would happen if I wrote poetry inspired by each of the planets? That idea started to gain momentum and then started blossoming into Someone Else’s Universe – a string of poems inspired by the planets, as well as the sun and moon. Rather than each poem being directly about each planet, they draw from abstract ideas inspired by feelings evoked by each planet, mythology associated with those planets, astrological aspects of those planets, or even that planet’s position in the solar system. Each poem took on its own shape and identity, and I think that mirrors what poetry is to me.