Here at the National Student Poets Program, we’re excited to introduce our 2021 Class of National Student Poets! We’re Hannah and Miranda, Manager and Assistant for the Program, and we truly have the coolest jobs.

But what is a National Student Poet? The National Student Poets Program is the nation’s highest honor for young poets (grades 10–11) creating original work. Annually, five students are selected for one year of service, each representing a different geographic region of the country. The Program believes in the power of youth voices to create and sustain meaningful change, and supports them in being heard.

And what does all that mean? The Program is entering its ninth year, which means forty National Student Poets have been appointed, with five more on the way. Being a National Student means something different for each of them.

National Student Poets host poetry readings; create and lead poetry workshops; attend events as special guest speakers and readers; and meet poetry heroes like Joy Harjo, Tina Chang, and Frank X Walker. Most years, it means traveling around the country; last year, it meant a lot of Zoom meetings and recording videos in front yards. We’re crossing our fingers that our planned Appointment Ceremony at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., can take place on September 21 with all our wonderful 2021 Poets in one location to kick off their year of service, and to have the Class of 2020 Poets convening in the same room together as a group for the very first time. There will be tears!

We’re also looking forward to seeing our program partner, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, in person once again. We couldn’t have made it through 2020 without their support and good humor as we worked together from up and down the Eastern Seaboard to make sure the 2020 National Student Poets had a fulfilling and expansive year of service even in the middle of all the uncertainty and upheaval.

And now, it’s time for the Class of 2021! It’s hard to believe, but the ninth Class has just been announced.

Our incredible Class of 2021 National Student Poets is:

RC Davis
Midwest Region

RC Davis is a rising senior and poet from Oak Park, Illinois. He began writing poetry seriously his freshman year when he joined his high school’s spoken word club and is a two-time competitor in the Chicago spoken word competition Louder Than a Bomb. His poems frequently wrestle with questions of gender and family and the strangeness of being a human with a brain and body. He is a winner of a 2019 Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Award and has been published in Driftwood, Blue Marble Review, and 3Elements Review. RC is an apprentice editor for BreakBread Literary Magazine, which focuses on the publication of writers under 25. He owes his poetic successes to the encouragement he has received from his slam team and his teachers.

Aanika Eragam

Southeast Region

Aanika Eragam is a senior at Milton High School in Milton, GA. Through her mother’s bedtime tales of South Indian mythology, Aanika was first exposed to the power of storytelling to connect her to her cultural heritage, unlock foreign perspectives, and help her explore history. Since then, she’s written poetry and creative nonfiction about culture, family, girlhood, and body image. She believes strongly in the power of words to bond and heal. Aanika edits for her high school’s literary magazine The Globe and serves as the 2021 Atlanta Youth Poet Laureate. If she were ever to get a tattoo, it would be of the line “There are enough ballrooms in you” from Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie’s poem “On This the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic, We Reconsider the Buoyancy of the Human Heart.” In her spare time, Aanika enjoys long walks outdoors, baking scones, and spending time with those she loves.

Kevin Gu

Northeast Region

Kevin Gu is 17 years old, attends Hopkinton High School, and, some might say, is a pretty normal guy. Aside from his involvement as editor-in-chief for HHS Press and being a self-proclaimed virtuoso pianist, all he really likes to do is hunt for boba shops and sing Chinese folk songs after writing. He finds that, as a Chinese-American, his heritage makes up a large part of his identity. As a result, much of his poetry explores childhood experiences and cultural history, whether that’s his own or that of others. More often than not, he falls down the rabbit hole of different historical events and discovers how certain motifs of memory, selfhood, and acceptance are reflected in his own roots. Ultimately, he hopes to create literature until every story confined within his body is released. Kevin was a participant in the 2019 Grubstreet Teen Writing Fellowship and his work can be found in Rattle and The National Poetry Quarterly, as well as on the back of assigned math worksheets (arguably his best writing to date).

Kechi Mbah

Southwest Region

Kechi Mbah is a rising senior at Carnegie Vanguard High School and a Houston native. She founded her school’s poetry club in late 2019 and serves as an editor for her school’s award-winning literary magazine, The Courtyard. She first found a love for poetry when she stumbled upon a YouTube video of a Brave New Voices slam competition in the fall of 2019 and has been performing and writing poetry ever since. Her poetry explores many avenues from making the known strange to chronicling her experiences as a Nigerian-American and the histories of her people. She is also passionate about strengthening her community and serves on the activism and community outreach committee of her school’s Black Student Union and has interned with NASA to help address problems within the food supply chain. She advanced to the semifinals of the 2020 Space City Slam (Houston’s largest teen slam competition) before it was canceled due to Covid-19, and her work can be found (or is forthcoming) in Blue Marble Review, The Incandescent Review, elementia, and elsewhere.

Sarah Fathima Mohammed

West Region

Sarah Fathima Mohammed is a first-generation Muslim-American and a rising junior at Harker Upper School. Poetry has become a world where she can speak freely, holding her voice in her hands while excavating the histories of the women in her family. She writes poetry sourced in grief, faith, and longing because, for her people, these emotions are inherited. When she travels back to her hometown—a small fishing village in Kumbakonam, India—Sarah sits in circles with girls at the mosque, introducing them to poetry. Together, they read and reread Safia Elhillo and Fatimah Asghar’s lovely anthology of Muslim voices, Halal If You Hear Me. She hopes to share with fellow immigrant women from conservative cultures how storytelling can be activism and how poetry can turn “otherness” into power. When she is not writing, Sarah loves long morning walks with her family and listening to music by Yuna.

Check back here for more information about the Class of 2021 as their year of service begins in September! In the meantime, visit our website, artandwriting.org/nspp, to learn more.