A poet who wrote a small book–or chapbook–about a street where she once lived told students at an AACC event on Thursday to not be afraid to write.

Patti Ross, who wrote the 2021 book “St. Paul Street Provocations,” a series of poems about social inequalities, told a campus audience to “speak your mind.”

“Whether if it’s in speaking or in writing, one of the great things about writing is that you can actually say what you want to say without completely putting yourself in the right,” Ross said.

After retiring from a career and moving to Baltimore after a breakup, in technology, Ross said she rediscovered her passion for writing.

“Walking around the city, and particularly the neighborhood I was in, and seeing the blight that was there and what needed to change, I think it made me decide I could say something,” the poet said at a Writers Reading presentation on campus.

Some of her poems are about homelessness, social justice, Black culture and American history.

According to Ross, “Home/Less,” is “one of my favorite poems in the book,” because of an experience she had with a homeless man.

“He started talking to me, and he said something to me one day about, ‘you know [about] the demons in his head, right?’” Ross said. “And, and I was just like, ‘Wow.’”

Creative writing professor Garrett Brown, who organized the event, said he likes to bring in authors for Writers Reading so students can ask them questions.

Brown added: “It’s a chance to be able to … really engage with working writers.”

Paige Corbe, a second-year liberal arts student, said Ross was “awesome.”

“I really liked her poem, ‘13 blues,’” Corbe said. “I got, like, goosebumps during it.”

The next Writers Reading presentation will be on Oct. 16.