Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 26/04) - Mandy Gellenbeck hopes her poetry will take her places. It's already taken the 17-year-old to Florida. She submitted a poem to a Web site and received an invitation to attend a convention in Orlando.

Mandy Gellenbeck: has taken her poetry on the road.

She and her mother saved up and made the trip early in March. Though Gellenbeck and her mom paid for everything -- including airfare, accommodations and a registration fee for the convention -- the budding poet said it was all "really fun."

Gellenbeck met other writers and read her poetry at open mike forums.

"I'm really into music and poetry," she said.

Gellenbeck has been writing poetry since she was 15. Her favourite artist was rapper Tupac Shakur. She bought a book of his poetry.

"The way he writes inspires me," she said.

The poem she submitted to the Web site was titled "Untitled." Gellenbeck has it memorized. She can scribble it off by heart into a reporter's notebook.

"To make a promise you cannot keep/ is breaking a little one's heart/ they look to you as if you're god/ and think of only the greatest/ so to make a promise you cannot keep/ is when they start to lose all the faith/ they ever had in you."

Gellenbeck works two jobs at Extra Foods, as a clerk during the day and then cleaning the store after hours. She has a few years of high school left, then she hopes to pursue further education and become a writer.