[caption id="attachment_3576" align="alignright" width="130"]James Carty[/caption]

Local 888 member James Carty can’t remember a time that he wasn’t writing. The 18 year old, who has worked at the Brockton Public Library since he was 15, says that creating poetry feels as natural to him as breathing. Until recently though, Carty felt too shy to share his passion with the world. “It was just something I kept to myself,” says Carty.

Since the release of Carty’s first volume of poetry last year, the secret is officially out. Not only is Live, Learn, Love on display at the main library and its branches but a reading is in the works. “The whole library knows now,” says Carty, who helps out with children’s programming and just about anything else that his colleagues at the library need.

Carty graduated from Brockton High School last year and is now studying at Massasoit Community College but hopes to transfer to UMass Boston and focus on creative writing. “That’s really my dream, to be able to study this thing that I love so much.”

Carty says that he got into poetry via his first love: music. As a teenager he was fascinated by hip hop artists who used verse to convey their feelings and experiences. His goal was to capture that same essence of real life and all of its challenges but without the musical accompaniment. “I listen to a lot of hip hop and R and B and I love figuring out how the artists tell a story. That motivates me to do the same thing.”

Live, Learn, Love is available on Amazon.com and Xlibris.

If you or someone you know would like to be featured in the Spark write to spark@seiu888.org.