My name is Tessa Mountain, and I’m a young author who hasn’t written much poetry recently. I usually like to write in prose, so I’m doing this half-marathon to expand my writing abilities. My end goal is to be able to write poetically, even when I’m writing in paragraphs. In order to do that, I need more experience writing poetry and using it to tell a story. My style strays pretty often, and I’m not entirely comfortable with what I write. However, the only way to improve is to step outside of my comfort zones, so I’m ready to try this out and see what happens. I want to be able to inspire the kind of emotions that I feel when I listen to spoken-word poetry, so I’ll try to use the same techniques that I hear in my favorite poets (like extended metaphors and imagery).