US student Vanessa Tahay stands out from the other teenagers in her school.Her skin is dark and her accent is thick. If you ask her , she will tell you these are the things she is proudest of. Tahay is a poet, and at 18 she was considered among the best in Los Angeles. When she is on the stage , audiences often go silent. They also laugh, shout and cry.But this doesn ’ t come easily for someone who comes from a village that sits at the base of a huge mountain range in Central America.When she first appeared at school, she was teased by others for being short and different.She never spoke, so they called her “mouse” . “How do I defend myself ? ” Tahay thought.“I don ’ t know how.” “Keep going , ” her mother would tell her. “At some point, you ’ ll learn.” She spent hours after school and on weekends watching the same DVD: English Without Barriers . Tahay ’ s elder brother, Elmer, persuaded her to go to the after­school poetry club. In the last six years, her English teacher Laurie Kurnick has turned Cleveland Charter High School ’ s poetry program into one of the most respected in the city.Her team draws from the likes of D . H.Laurence, Pat Mora and Kendrick Lamar to create poems about their own lives. The poems focus on many things — some funny, some painful. The first time Tahay read the group ’ s poems, she was wild with joy. “I wish I could write like that , ” she thought.“I want to say something.” She wrote her first poem about her first year in America. She called it Invisible . The day her turn came to recite poems in front of the team, she broke down crying. She cried for 15 minutes.“I had so much held in , ” Tahay said.“I couldn ’ t even finish it.” But she kept at it despite her less­than­perfect grammar, spelling and diction ( 措辞 ) . Still, she wouldn ’ t tell her friends about her poetry because she worried they would make fun of her. But with time, her poems changed her. “They gave me pride , ” Tahay said. “They told me that I ’ m worth something.” “She had this innocence , ” Kurnick said. “This willingness to be genuine shows you things you don ’ t ever see.”