NCETA STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARDS

IF YOU (OR ANYONE YOU KNOW) ARE A TEACHER IN THE NORTH CAROLINA PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION! THANK YOU.

To read some of last year's winning poems, please go to http://ncpoetlaureate.blogspot.com/2009/10/first-light-nceta-high-school-laureate.html.

To find more information on these awards, please click on the post heading for the link.

The Poet Laureate Award is given by the family of Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina’s first woman poet laureate.

Eligible Contestants

The contest is open to all North Carolina students in grades 6-8 and 9-12.

Awards Given

The high school winner will receive $250.00 and copy of the winning poem printed on a

broadside.

The high school second place writer will receive $50.00.

The middle school winner will receive $250.00 and a framed copy of the winning poem printed on a broadside.

The middle school second place writer will receive $50.00.

All winners will be recognized by North Carolina’s poet laureate at NCETA’s annual conference.

All winning and honorable mention poems will be published on the NCETA and the NC Arts Council websites.

Requirements

The number of entries allowed per school is determined by enrollment:

Up to 500 (one entry); 501-1000 (two entries); 1001-1500 (three entries); and above 1500 (four entries).

Schools larger than 500 may include only one entry per student.

Poems must be 40 lines or fewer.

The entry must be typed and submitted in electronic format.

No photos, please.

Email one copy of the entry form and entry to ncstudentlaureateaward@nceanglishteacher.org by April 15, 2010.

Mail one copy of the entry form and entry to John York, 804 Westover Terrace, Greensboro, NC 27408. DO NOT use certified or registered mail. Any entries submitted via certified or registered mail will be disqualified.

MAGPIE TALES: DEMETER'S DAFFODIL

Now is the season when the goddess Demeter welcomes her daughter Kore (or Persephone) back from the Underworld, her joy at the reunion kindling Spring for the world. Here she finds in the first daffodil her beloved daughter's presence.

DEMETER'S DAFFODIL

(for Willow at Magpie Tales)

To dip

into your corolla

carefully one wintry

finger and touch

to my throat

what I hear begin tuning

up downwind,

the little frogs

chorusing cullowhee

cullowhee, Cherokee

shivaree down by

the rain-swollen Tuckasee-

gee, what sweeter

scent than the attar

of you ever

after come back

to me, Golden

Girl!

My laughing daughter!

REBUILDING MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE

(Magpie Tales)

Rebuilding My Grandfather's House

In the ashes I search for a nail straight enough

to be hammered. (Oh, for a trove of new nails spilling

out of its box like gold coins, silver

earrings, a handful of diamonds discovered

among the debris of my grandfather's house.)

As soon as I find it

I pound with conviction but no skill.

I hold up my battered blue thumb to the sky

and I curse as magnificently

as my grandfather ever did.

Tears streak my dirty cheeks. Each day I quit

and each day I start over again,

using patience I hardly knew I had inherited.

I swear by the toil of my clumsy hands

I will make of this junk-pile a dwelling place yet.

I work best when I take my time,

coaxing woolly worms into a tin can

and letting them go again, dreaming

the night sky unfolds like a blueprint I learn

to read. I dance by the light of the moon

and feel lonely, already at home here.

When I hammer the last nail straight

into the last sagging beam, I will

spit on the edge of my shirt and sit down

on a barrel to scrub my face clean.

I will not look my Sunday-best,

but I cannot wait forever.

The hinges will creak as I open the front door

and call out my grandfather's name.

In the silence that answers, I step

slowly over the threshold,

believing that each board supports me.

I stand in my grandfather's house again.

Vernal Equinox: A Chance for Healthcare Reform

(Sunrise on the first day of Spring)

On this Sunday, the day after the Vernal Equinox, when our Congress has the chance to pass reforms that so many former presidents, all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt, have attempted, I am hoping that the distortions, outright lies, and the viciousness that have accompanied this "debate," including the chanting of the "N word" at black legislators and the spitting on another of them, will fail and that the better nature of American politics will prevail so that here in Jackson County friends I love will no longer have to fear losing insurance coverage when they develop live-threatening illness.

Here's a quote from one of my favorite columnists, Gail Collins.

"We live in an era in which the power of the new hypermedia is so intense and politics so rabid that it’s almost impossible for Congress to do anything more difficult than tax cuts or highway construction. Yet, here’s this huge, complicated, controversial reform — bigger than any domestic program in decades.

If it passes, the short-term political consequences are unknowable. But in 10 years, people will look back in amazement that we once lived in a time when Americans couldn’t get health care coverage if they were sick, when insurance companies could cut off your benefits for being sick, and when run-of-the-mill serious illnesses routinely destroyed families’ financial security."

I wish you a lovely spring. Our early garden is in--spinach, beets, cabbage, broccoli. We are waiting now for the predicted rain to come and water it.

ALMA: Poems and Drawings

(copyright by Sharyn Jane Hyatt)


Many years ago I self-published with artist Sharyn Jane Hyatt a collection of poems and drawings titled Alma. Those poems were later gathered into my Wildwood Flower, published by LSU Press in 1992. Sherry's drawings could not be included, alas, and I still think about doing another limited edition run of this manuscript.

I thought you might enjoy seeing some of her drawings, so for the next day or two, I will be posting one of them, along with one of the poems.

MAGPIE TALES: A WOMAN'S HAND

Thanks again to Magpie Tales (http://www.magpietales.blogspot.com/) for bringing this poem up from my memory. It was inspired by the photo below it, courtesy of photographer Louanne Watley's Evelyn Series.

Of all the bones, these the most eloquent, lying upturned on the windowsill, holding a woman's life mapped in their grasp, every pulse-beat her heart's story. (photo credit: Louanne Watley) The following poem is from my volume Catching Light (LSU Press), based on Louanne's series of photos documenting the last months of a woman who wished to be call Evelyn. Or Eve. Vanity
Without hands a woman would stand at her mirror looking back only, not touching, for how could she? Eyelid. Cheek. Earlobe. Neck-hollow. The pulse points that wait to be dusted with jasmine or lavender. The lips she rubs rose with a forefinger. She tends the image she sees in her glass, the cold replication of woman, the one who dared eat from her own hand the fruit of self-knowledge.

A LITTLE SPRING CLEANING: FINDING OLD PHOTOS

Just a little. I'm not much of a housekeeper, but I did begin going through some old photographs that I keep in various boxes, some framed, but most not, and came across several that drew me up short, made me wonder what time is all about, and how it has its way with us. (This was posted last spring before I was able to scan photos....my apologies.) This is a small photo of my grandmother, Marion Fry Stripling Bailey. She had two husbands; my grandfather died when my dad was 11 or so, of pneumonia, and she re-married. I wish the sharpness were better, so that you could see the expression on her face. She was quite elegant in her youth and a rarity in those days--a well-educated woman who read Latin, poetry, Nostradamus, treatises on Phrenology, Palmistry, and all sorts of other things. She also sewed for her family and kept the household together through the depression. And, oh yes, she was a teacher for several years. The photo below, another small, small image, is my father in his high school graduation regalia. He was a smart one. Can't you tell by that ironic smile? This was taken outside our big house on the farm. The window just behind his head is the one I woke up to in the morning, before we moved my bed to the other side of the room. When my maternal grandparents celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, the photo below was taken at the banquet. It hangs in our hall and was getting pretty dusty. I took it down to dust and decided to photograph it for my blog followers. Ulmont and Carrie Mae Campbell lived on the farm that I've written so much about. They survived the Depression, with six children to feed and numerous animals, including the mules I so detested. The yard was full of chickens and turkeys. And plenty of petunias, lantana, and huge, chomping grasshoppers. The two photos I really wanted to find were nowhere in this group--a head shot of my grandmother in a lace mantilla and me at my third birthday party, in a long organdy dress, sitting on the table beside my birthday cake. When those turn up, I'll let you know. I did find this photo, though, of me and my daughter at her third birthday party. She's wearing the dress I made for the occasion. I've boxes more to comb through, looking for treasures, those images that call the past back again and again, even as I stand in the kitchen at 4:00 in the afternoon, hearing the dogs barking outside for their supper, knowing I need to put these old photos aside and get back to my numerous kitchen duties. I'll let the other boxes wait till tomorrow. A woman's work is never done, true? And remembering is important work.

My First Blog Post: Strawberries

(from June of '08)

Everybody knows the story about the poet--yes, of course, she has to be a poet---trying to climb the rockface, while beneath her is a hungry tiger and above her on the summit a hungry bear, let's say a black bear because I'm here in the Blue Ridge. No bear around here is hungry enough to eat anybody, much less a poet, but this is a story, and the teller gets to tell it the way she wants. She even gets to put a tiger in it, even though there are no longer any tigers on our mountain trails. No lions, either. Our poor poet can go neither up nor down, but as she stares straight ahead at the rock, the lichens, the little roots poking out trying to gain their own footing, she notices a patch of wild strawberries growing from a crevice. One particular strawberry calls to her, the most enticing, succulent strawberry she has ever beheld. She forgets the ravenous beasts above and below her and reaches for the strawberry, places it in her mouth, and tastes its sweetness all the way down to her quivering toes, doing their best to keep her balanced for just a while longer.

Strawberry by strawberry, we move through our days, and if we are poets who hang out in the kitchen a lot, as I do, we look forward to this time of year because of----yes, strawberries. This morning I have been preparing strawberries for freezing and jam-making, and I've placed several in my mouth to savor. Why should I resist? The lions, tigers, and bears never go away.
This strawberry I'm reaching for is all I've got. And right now it's enough.

LONGING FOR SUNFLOWERS

(ON A RAINY DAY AT THE TAIL END OF WINTER, I LIKE LOOKING BACK OVER MY PHOTOS FROM LAST SUMMER!)

THANK YOU TO MY BLOG READERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO HAVE LEFT COMMENTS OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS. BECAUSE MY LAPTOP SEEMS UNFORGIVABLY SLOW LATELY, I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO VISIT ALL OF YOUR BLOGS YET, BUT I WILL SOON.

I WILL BE TAKING A SHORT BREAK FROM NEW POSTS OVER THE NEXT WEEK, SO I WILL BE POSTING SOME OF MY FIRST BLOGGING ATTEMPTS, AS WELL AS SEVERAL FROM MY LAUREATE'S LASSO. I HOPE YOU ENJOY THEM.

MEANWHILE, I'LL BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR GREEN, GREEN, GREEN!

MAGPIE TALES: DANCING WITH GANESH

Here's to Ganesh, the Hindu Elephant god, who's ready to have a good time, thanks to Willow's Magpie Tales' writing prompt.

DANCING WITH THE STARS

Ganesh

The Remover of Obstacles

leaps

from the mouse

on which he has been riding

for centuries

shakes off his god- garb

rattles the universe

and rolls the wind up

like a rug from the dance floor

where he does The Funky Pachyderm

Bollywood style

to a standing ovation

on this evening’s Our Galaxy’s Got Talent

for three perfect scores

from the judges

who say he’s the biggest

star they’ve ever had on the show!

(photo from Wikipedia)

THINKING MYSELF HOME

The drive home to SW Georgia gets longer and longer, no matter much Sugarland I sing along with on the cd player or how many goosebumps I cultivate while listening to Roderigo's Concierto de Aranjuez on the fm station. (Or Rusalka's Hymn to the Moon, after which I pledge undying devotion to Antonin Dvorak) Thus, this poem, which seems especially apropos, considering I had to head for the flatlands on Monday before the snowstorm hit.


Thinking Myself Home

I have to look up and over the trees
all the way to the mountains I see in the distance,

then hang a left soon as I get there,
thinking my way down the Blue Ridge

and into the piedmont just south
of Atlanta. From there it's a straight

shoot to home,
if I still want to go, which I do

because this is the best way,
by stealth, no one knows I am coming,

no cake to be baked,
and my mother not worrying most of her day

by the telephone, clearly imagining
fifty car pileups,

the ambulance wailing, the whole bloody
nine miles of interstate closed

for the body count.
No idle comments about my new haircut,

my extra pounds. I could be dust
on the air or a bright stab of light passing through.

I don't have to stay long.
I can leave when I want to, without feeling guilty

when I see my father's eyes squinching
back tears as I drive away.

Hello and goodbye. That's it.
And I'm back

in my bedroom that faces south into the side
of these trees, with the radio on

warning Traveler's Advisory. Wrecking-ball hailstones.
King Kong tornado. Megaton Blizzard.

A forecast so unimaginably bad, only a fool
would drive home in this kind of weather.

MAGPIE TALES: An Ounce

Ah well, my post is late for Magpie Tales, but here it is anyway, a poem I began when looking at how weights came to be measured. I'm down in SW Ga. now with my mother, and wonder of wonders, she has broadband, so I will be able to continue my posts. Sorry this is late, but I had some stress-related symptoms last night and ended up in the ER!

An Ounce

being twenty pennyweights, I marvel

at such ancient measurements I never think of

when I weigh my cabbages at the supermarket.

Ounces and pounds, but first pennyweights

and before that, a grain--twenty-four

to be honest. No more and no less.

Pennies dropped in the piggy's slot.

Pennies from heaven. A penny for my thoughts,

which weigh nothing. I can hold in my fist

what amounts to an ounce, grubby pennies

I pour from my coat pockets onto the table.

How many grains

from my garden have I tracked

inside, so much weight in my rugs?

My dirty feet tip the scales!