How Tara Prakash ’25 uses the written word to connect with and be of service to others.

Last spring, the state of Maryland launched its first ever Youth Poet Laureate program and named Sidwell Friends senior Tara Prakash as its inaugural poet. Prakash has been writing poetry since she was a child, often with a focus on social justice. Her work has garnered numerous awards and been featured in Best American High School Writing, The Lumiere Review, and The Daphne Review, among other publications. 

“I think poetry is powerful,” she says. “It can do a lot that other forms of communication can’t—like get through to people. It’s a really compelling way to communicate about issues that separate people because it transcends those differences.”

Along those lines, Prakash doesn’t just write poetry, she also uses it—and other forms of creative writing—to teach underserved communities about the power of storytelling. She is the founder of the nonprofit Write to Right, which she says provides people with the “tools to advocate for and communicate about the causes and issues they believe in.”

Prakash originally started Write to Right as part of her Eagle Project in Scouting, and credits Scout leaders with “showing me the power of agency and taking ownership.” She designed a weeklong creative writing workshop for elementary school students and the idea took off from there. She expanded the curriculum, so that each workshop builds on the previous one, and added more exercises centered on advocacy. Now Write to Right can be found in 12 states and four countries, with regular, in-person, and completely free-of-charge workshops.

It is not surprising that Prakash is a Scout given her poetry, which uses a lot of images from nature (from the entirety of the ocean to the minutiae of a tree) and often tackles the passage of time. In “Caged,” she writes: “As time hurdles forward, slivers of currants and azures, and bursting ocean ecosystems slip through my grasp.” Similarly, in “Our Star”: “I find you, find your smiling eyes in the twilight. Time does not apply to the stars.”

“A lot of people tend to think poetry needs to be obscure and complex in order to be meaningful,” Prakash says. “But really, poetry can be straightforward and simple and be just as moving.” It is a philosophy Write to Right emphasizes and one that comes directly from Sidwell Friends. “My 6th grade teacher, Becky Farnum, instilled this in me: leaning into simplicity and focusing on the message, the core feeling, not the flowery language around it,” she says. “Ms. Becky also pushed me to get my work out into the world. I first started submitting in her class and have been doing it ever since. She cultivated my love of language.”

Working with groups like Words, Beats & Life (WBL), a hip-hop-centric educational nonprofit in the District, Prakash is also cultivating a love of performance. “WBL has been incredible in getting us out there as young artists, offering us platforms and events to perform at,” she says, “and being a sounding board and giving us feedback on our performances.” Performing written work, it turns out, is a great way to finetune it. Of course, as the Maryland Youth Poet Laureate, her performance spaces will be a bit more formal: Prakash will perform her work at the White House, Library of Congress, and U.S. Capitol. She has already performed at the Kennedy Center and the Brave New Voices Festival. Most recently, she and the 92-year-old Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri hosted a cross-generational poetry event with writers of all ages at Politics & Prose.

Prakash says that sense of community is the best aspect of becoming the Youth Poet Laureate. “The other writers I’ve met are so passionate about their craft,” she says. “That has been the most exciting part.” She meets regularly with youth poet laureates from around the country for monthly “YPL Institutes” that feature guest writers and teach techniques of the craft. “There’s so much energy and imagination in that space, and I always leave feeling refreshed and energized.”