The poet Harmony Devoe has always dedicated herself to telling the full story.

In fourth grade, she became inspired by a simple leaf. One side was bright yellow, vibrant and alive. The other side, however, was brown, crumpled, and on the verge of death. Likening the stark contrast in the leaf to the multifaceted nature of society in her poem “Sometimes,” she noted that “if you only saw one side, you would never know the truth about the other half.”

As Devoe got older, she strove to embody the mindset of a storyteller by educating herself and the people around her through poetry. After becoming Vermont’s Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate in 2024 at age fifteen, she garnered a platform to harness her voice to, as she explains, prevent people from “making assumptions without knowing the whole story.”

At the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which highlights the perspectives, traditions, and aspirations of all cultures, Devoe felt right at home.

In a post-Festival interview over Zoom, Devoe deemed her participation in the 2025 Festival’s Youth and the Future of Culture program as one of the best experiences of her life. During the Festival, she spent her time writing and reading new poems, leading poetry workshops, and engaging in interviews at the Wordsmiths’ Cafe on the National Mall. Devoe was grateful for the opportunity to “share my poetry with a large audience and meet talented and passionate youth from around the country and world,” she said.

During the Festival’s private opening reception in the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Devoe read an original poem that perfectly encapsulates the essence of Youth and the Future of Culture. Later, she discussed her rationale for writing the poem, titled “Culture as Compass.”

“As we aim to move forward and progress as a society, we can use lessons from our elders, history, and cultures to guide us,” Devoe stated, presenting cultural heritage as a metaphorical compass that directs youth.

The poem’s title speaks for itself, but according to Devoe, “Culture as Compass” underwent three title changes; the piece was initially named “My Rewriting Kind” and then “We Wear Tomorrow” to emphasize, she explained, the “forced responsibility youth carry… to repair past harm and destruction.” But after drawing inspiration from various cultures, identities, and groups that had “come to D.C. to be showcased and recognized” at the Festival, Devoe decided to give her poem its current title.

Devoe opens her poem with an affirmation that culture isn’t only learned; “it’s what We dare to make, create, repeat.” Through these active verbs, she calls attention to the pivotal role of youth in shaping culture and progress. Later in her poem, she recounts how youth were “taught to hold signs / above heads / say the names / of the Dead,” referencing youth-led protests against police brutality and other hate crimes during the pandemic.

Devoe herself is the change she has wished to see as a chair of the Vermont State Youth Council and a volunteer at several humanitarian organizations. Like other youth of her poem, Devoe is “not the someday, / but the now.”

She emphasizes her vision to “reclaim” and “relearn” cultural and artistic traditions, giving each process a respective verse. In our interview, she discussed how she sought to reclaim aspects of her Filipina heritage after spending time with her lola (“grandma” in Tagalog) in the Philippines.

“She didn’t share much of her culture with her husband and children when she immigrated to the U.S.,” Devoe explained. “So when she was able to bring me to the Philippines for the first time and share her culture, food, language, and extended family, I was inspired to write a lot of poetry.”

Devoe also saw this reclaiming and relearning at the Festival.

“Youth learned cultural traditions from their elders and brought them forward into their communities to make them accessible and applicable for new generations,” she said of her fellow participants.

She even pushes for the art form of poetry to be relearned, believing poetry has become “modern and current” when it is “heard and watched” in an age of social media. She always reads her poems with “emotion and emphasis on certain powerful words, images, or ideas” to make poetry “a form of entertainment.”

Devoe refers to youth as “the rupture, the spark, and the flame,” paralleling youth activism to the spread of a fire. Throughout history, when young people question inadequate systems, their bold sentiments quickly grow powerful and widespread, vowing to never be extinguished.

Although youth are largely able to partake in a movement’s birth, Devoe feels that they are “left out of the picture” when decisions are made. She wants youth to be “involved in every part” of change’s metaphorical fire: the exposure of the issue (the rupture), the creation of an action plan (the spark), and the implementation of policy (the flame). With aspirations of working as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, Devoe herself will “rewrite liberties / and design future victories.”

In the poem, Devoe further accredits youth and community by capitalizing words meant to embody the masses: We, My, Our, Humanity, and the Dead. The poem’s collective diction loosely mirrors that of federal documents, pulling from phrases like “We the People,” expressing that the government’s influence originates from its citizens. Devoe reassures the masses that their fight won’t be in vain as long as they continue finding power in “unity and collective drive.”

“Culture as Compass” can be read simultaneously through a sociocultural and environmental lens, with the issues of climate change and social justice proving to be deeply interrelated. This is most evident in the poem’s striking yet positive ending, in which Devoe expects upcoming generations to “repair much of the harm people as a whole have caused.”

“The ambition, dedication, and care I observed in youth and saw at the Festival has given me hope,” she said afterward. She was especially uplifted by the storytelling at the Festival. “I chose the word ‘rewrite’ because, as a writer, much of the change that I make is inspired by my words.”

Devoe encourages us to practice cautious optimism.

“I’m trying to express that youth are not going to copy past generations’ actions,” she clarified. “We are instead going to promise to ourselves and future generations that we will take care of each other, humanity, and the Earth’s well-being.”

Ruth Schmidt is a program intern at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival through the Sitar Center’s Bloomberg Arts Internship and a rising senior at Jackson-Reed High School in Washington, D.C. She aspires to be a poet but won’t let anyone know it.