Coffee shop poet shares her experiences

By Rachel Masri

WINTER PARK, Fla. – Cup O’ Soul Coffee house in Winter Park is a cozy place for college students to come and work on projects using the free Wi-Fi, hang out sipping lattes or just listen to local artists who humbly bring their work for an opportunity to perform.

Monday nights are poetry night at Cup O’ Soul. Local poets are invited to share their work with their peers in a homey atmosphere. This Monday’s featured poet was Michelle Will of Oviedo, a student at Valencia Community College who feels that she has something to share with those around her.

“My dad left my family when I was 13. I have had a lot of difficult experiences since, and I think that poetry gives me a way to release a lot of the clutter piling up in my head from day to day,” said Will, who always invites her audience to talk to her at the end of her reading if they have any questions about what she writes. “I feel that as an artist I am able to communicate things in ways that might speak more effectively to some people than regular conversation would.”

One of the poems Will wrote about her father reads:

“I’m too caught up in broken glass
By moving forward, but looking back
I can see myself too clearly as I watch you disappearing
Why should I lose my faith? I know the place you're coming from
You've lost and found your way right into someone else's arms”

She said that a lot of what she writes can become about her father, even if she doesn’t intend for it to when she starts writing, but Will sees a redeeming side of it.

“I’ve come so far over the years and recovered as much as anyone can from something like that, and I’ve managed to do it without completely hating the world,” says Will. “Now I can share what I write with people who could be going through the same or similar things that I went through, and I can actually talk to them about it and hopefully give them some form of comfort.”

Abbott Jones of Orlando, a member of the small audience said, “Her poetry isn’t really a style that I choose to read often, but she still manages to make some intense statements through what she writes. I enjoyed it despite myself.”

Coral Watler of Orlando frequents Cup O’ Soul on poetry night. “She is a lot better than some of the others I have heard here. Her poems do more than just whine about circumstances, which happens a lot,” Watler says of Will’s work. “They have more of a declaration and conclusion.”