Danyla Nash: Future famous poet and author

Danyla Nash, sophomore at Urbana High School, is the City of Urbana’s first Youth Poet Laureate. Nash was selected as the inaugural Youth Poet Laureate last year and her one year-term ends next month in March 2023.

Like many teens, Nash has had her share of hard times. To deal with some of the more complicated moments in life, Nash turns to writing. To Nash, writing is a tool and an outlet to vent anger and frustrations. Writing is a creative way to express how she feels and it is a way to talk about important topics such as social justice and injustice.

Nash hopes to make a difference in the world through her writing. What “inspires me to write is the thought that maybe what I put on a page will be manifested into something that can be taken across the country and help the world,” she said.

Slam poetry is Nash’s preferred form of poetry. In fact, she started her poetry writing career in middle school when she helped create the Writer’s of Oya group, a slam poetry group for young women of color. With the help of the group, Nash learned that spoken word poetry can be a powerful way to communicate social justice and injustice issues, as she clearly does in her poems, “Am I a Threat,” “The Black Side,” and “All My People Killed by Police.”

Nash’s poetry also encompasses raw emotion that is relatable to many teens and through her poetry, she hopes to get other young people involved in poetry and spoken word. In “The Stars I’ve Caught,” Nash talks about being bullied, anxiety, and “going natural” with her hair. Things that other teens can relate to. She mentions strength, self validation, and knowledge as “stars” that she is striving for.

Although her poetry can be relatable to other teens and relevant to current issues and struggles teens go through, Nash is quite unique and stands out among her peers. She is hardworking, determined, and involved in multiple extracurricular activities. She is adamant on not letting her struggles hold her down or keep her from achieving her dreams. Nash says that “poetry is a shovel I use to dig myself out of.” Poetry and spoken word is a way to deal with the hard stuff so she can push through to the good stuff.

On her rise to fame, Nash has performed for audiences both live and online and has also spoken and performed on radio shows and at public events. She is a 2021 MLK, Jr. Creative Expressions Winner and has work published in a collection called Unmasked (a collection of poetry from the Writer’s of Oya). Nash is currently finishing a book that she hopes to get published later this year.

Although she isn’t big on giving advice, one tip she has for other young writers is that “fancy vocabulary isn’t necessary. Simplistic words make for an amazing piece.”

And for a final thought, “don’t pressure your writing style to mature with you. It kinda just happens on its own.”