Daniel Sousa Silva is a creative soul who finds inspiration in writing poetry. He calls it the closest thing to painting with words.
“It’s capturing a feeling with only words and spaces, trying to make someone else feel something,” said Danbury’s Silva, a senior in the Creative and Professional Writing program at Western Connecticut State University who was recently selected for the Connecticut Poetry Circuit. “It’s not something to necessarily understand. It’s something you have to feel.”
He said he was ecstatic and honored to be nominated. “Nothing like this has happened to me before,” he said. “Then I realized the weight of the selection, the accomplishment, and that the judges, people who knew nothing about me, liked my work enough to select me for this.”
The Connecticut Poetry Circuit was established in 1968 to continue the work of the New England Poetry Circuit that was founded in 1964 by the Academy of American Poets and Holly Stevens, daughter of acclaimed poet Wallace Stevens. Each year, the Connecticut Poetry Circuit enlists a panel of poets to judge a statewide contest of college-student poets.
Silva will participate in on-campus poetry readings with other student collegiate poets from Trinity College, the University of Hartford, Quinnipiac, and Yale University.
“It’s incredible that I’ll be traveling across the state to read my own writing in front of people,” said Silva, a singer-songwriter and bass player for his band, Lootbug. “I’m already used to sort of doing that with my band, but this is different. A lot of people who don’t know me will hear my writing.”
Silva appreciates the connection between music and poetry. “I’ve taken both inspiration and direct lines from some of my poems from the songs I’ve written,” he added. “My poetry is raw and emotional, but there’s also a musical quality to it, which comes from my songwriting.”
Silva credits the WCSU writing program for providing a firm foundation to write stories and poetry that others will see and critique and push him to become a better writer. “I entered college as a pretty good writer, and will leave college as a much stronger writer because of the classes I took,” he said. “I’ve become much better at intentionality and being more vulnerable through my writing.”
Silva gained experience as editor-in-chief of The Howl, a literary magazine for high schoolers, and is Vice President of The Student Publication Board, helping with The Black & White, a printed literary journal.
According to Brian Clements, CSU professor and co-chair of creative and professional writing, Silva is the latest in a tradition of WCSU poets selected for the Connecticut Poetry Circuit.
“We’ve had a poet selected in four of the last five years, which is a testament to the supportive and nurturing community of writers in our Writing Department. From his first semester at WCSU, Dan showed up as one of the most curious and explorative poets, which is where all great writers start,” Clements said. “He writes really cool poems. His poems keep getting better each year, and we wanted to recognize Dan’s hard work and talent with the nomination. His work speaks to a range of experiences not only of his generation but also of immigrant families in our area of Connecticut.”
Silva credits Clements and his class on Forms of Poetry along with Professor Caycedo-Kimura’s Poetry Workshop for helping him refine his poetry. “Poetry is important because words hold a lot of power. It can make you feel seen, feel something you haven’t felt before, put words to thoughts and feelings you had, spread ideas, and make you feel alive or dead. There’s an indescribable feeling to poetry, like a shiver some get from listening to music. Whether it’s political or personal, I’m saying something that I think people should hear.”
Silva uses his musicality and poetic ingenuity to express feelings. “A great poem always has some kind of musical quality to it – the reading experience feels smooth yet rhythmic, which is done through word choice and line break usage,” he said. “Many songs can be poems, but intent makes the difference. A song can be poetic, and you can turn a poem into a song, which is something I’ve done before.”
Upon graduating in May, Silva will pursue a music career with a side of writing.
“Hopefully, I can find a job that has to do with writing, but also focus on my band, seeing if it could go anywhere big. I just need to try, because if I don’t, down the line when I’m older, I know I’ll regret it,” he said. “If I were to gain a good amount of success through music, I’d also write and get published. If I had success in that way, I’d be an artist creating anything I like.”
