NC STUDENT LAUREATE AWARDS FOR MIDDLE SCHOOL: LINDSEY DODGE, CAITLIN PARRIS, AND ABRIANNA BERRY

Macon Middle School in Franklin, NC, swept the Middle School category in our third annual NC English Teachers Association Student Poet Laureate Awards, judged by Cathy Smith Bowers, our state Poet Laureate. They are receiving their awards today at the annual conference held at Wake Forest University. Falecia Metcalf was our Second Prize winner last year. Addie Fairchild has been among the winners of the Mount Jefferson State Park's annual poetry contests. Congratulations to these five young poets!

Abrianna Berry, Caitlin Parris, and Lindsey Dodge, Macon County Middle School








First Prize: TIE


Everything




Everything is the same
Her clothes still hang in the closet
Pictures sit there gathering dust
There's still her place on their bed
Pawpaw doesn't disturb


by Lindsey Dodge, Macon Middle School, Franklin, NC




Kathy


I loved to watch her
in her big sun hat,
wiping the sweat
from her face,
kneeling on the ground
like she was praying.


The flowers she planted
were the most beautiful things
I have ever seen.


When she watered them,
the water would dance across them,
the sun shining over them.




Caitlin Parris
Macon Middle School








Second:


Squirrel Hunting With My Dad


We went up the mountain where
My dad hunted when he was little.
It was cold, the wind
Whipping up the holler, trees shaking.
Me and Daddy went to the top of the mountain.
We sat down and waited and had
A silent talk.


*******
by Abrianna Berry, Macon Middle School




Honorable Mention:




Child of the Wind,

by Falecia Metcalf, N. Buncombe Middle School, Weaverville


Sing to me,
with a soft melody.
Talk to me,
as if to a child.
Comfort me,
as if I were yours,
because in my heart
I am.
Whisper to me,
with words of joy.
I belong right here,
spinning around and around.
Guide me,
with a helping hand.
Lead me,
for without that
I'd be lost forever.
Stop me,
and make me think clearly.
I've always felt this way
no way to make it stop.
Not always in this place,
but always remembering
that special feeling
of belonging
I'm always look for.
Cradle me;
I'm yours,
a child of the Wind



I FEEL THE SEASONS (Mount Jefferson)


I feel the winter coldness on my face,
the trees that cover me are all frozen
My nose is frozen.
The air is windy

The snow is all around me.

I feel the spring breeze through my hair,

From the bottom up I'm green all over.

Animals waking everywhere,
Flowers swaying along with the wind,
Flowers all around me.

I feel the summer sun on my shoulders,

People climbing to my peak.

The fiery warmth touches me day and night,

Picnics on my tree covered skirt,

Fireflies all around me.
I feel the chill through my ruffled coat,

As time changes, days get shorter.

Leaves are falling through the brisk air,

The temperature is dropping down low,
Bright Colors all around me.



Addie Fairchild
6th grade, Westwood Elementary
Jefferson, NC

TIMBERLINE: Poem

TIMBERLINE

Looking up at the ruins of them,

ragged edges those dead trees

raise against the sky, and beyond

them the cut of a hawk’s wing,

the curve of the river

of cloud shapes, I’m likely to squander

this morning with dreaming them

turned back to women again, having grown

old along with these mountains

and left here to die like the rest of us.

I’d sit for hours and watch,

if I could, how the wind through their branches

keeps trying to make them sway,

supple as girls again, line-dancing

over the rocky horizon of Snowbird.

But not much of morning’s left.

I should be piecing a new quilt or mending

my husband’s socks. I should be stirring

the beans left to scorch in the pot.

What does wind whisper

up there of death? Or is dancing

the gist of it? As for my need to bear witness

to all I cannot keep from dying,

the truth is I’ve never liked loose ends.

Just look at my quilts: a succession

of rings, wreaths, and whirligigs.

Threaded since daybreak,

my needle waits here on the table

as if to remind me how stitches too small

to be known save by touch

of the thread toiling under my fingers

can fashion a way out of one death and into

another. So stand up, I tell myself.

Shake out your stiff limbs and sway

like your sisters up there on the ridge,

still in line for the next dancing lesson.

from BLACK SHAWL, LSU Press, 1992

NINA OTERIA: NC STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARDS

Nina Oteria Foster, whose poem "Leaving It Behind" received Honorable Mention in this year's NCETA Student Poet Laureate Awards, is a senior at Raleigh Charter High School. She has written poetry since her middle years and has self-published a volume of poetry entitled Sunshine @ Midnight. For the past two years she has been the assistant at the NC State Young Writers' Workshop. Nina also won the At-Large award in the 2009 Raleigh Fine Arts Society short story contest for her story Caution: Slippery When Wet.

Leaving it Behind

by: Nina Oteria

chase me on the wind

chase me like change,

like revelry with no writhing regrets

chase me

into the chapped, chipped, charred corners

chase me

I challenge the pretty, prude past

chase me like freedom and failure and the fall

for I am on the wind,

unwieldy, changing dang direction on a whim

no seven sails,

no captain, nor compass

so chase me

chance, fate, change:

I challenge you.

chase me.

MANDI DEAN: NCETA STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARDS

Mandi Dean, who is a junior at Smoky Mountain High School, received Honorable Mention in the NCETA Student Poet Laureate Awards for the following poem. It's great to see students writing sonnets these days!

The World’s Music

The noise that’s all around me fills my ears—
The bouncing, laughing, bubbly shrieks of glee.
A cry, a shout, and eyes welled up with tears;
Arpeggios formed in oddest harmony.
The school of bricks that looms two stories tall,
It swallows me into its rooms of chance,
With colors swirled on boards and down the hall,
And waves of voices twirling in their dance.
And when I seek my place of solitude
The trees whisper their stories to the wind.
The grasses sway and sunlight lifts my mood,
While birds sing under skies that have no end.
The music of the world is part of me,
And with it from the world I am now free.

--Mandi Dean

RACHEL THOMPSON: NC STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARDS

RACHEL THOMPSON'S submission to this years NC English Teachers Association's Student Laureate Awards has received Honorable Mention in the High School division. Rachel, the daughter of Gary and Lynda Thompson, is a senior and an orchestra student, a violinist, at Penn-Griffin School for the Arts. She wants to write a novel one day. Her poetry has won honorable mentions in contests sponsored by the Phoenix Festival and N. C. Poetry Society, as well as a second prize from Muse on Greensboro, a contest sponsored by the Greensboro Public Library.

Ripples or Pages

Pink sunset

glittering off the lake

as Your voice whispers through tree tops.

In the sun behind the distant storm clouds

I see Your features-- quite subtle

quite obvious.

You wrap Your arms around me

as the lake, the meadow,

and the forest of oak and pine surrounding.

Deep breath - closed eyes

I float to the surface of the lake

Your touch is the ripples

Smile

~~~

Brow furrowed and science books

the frown on his face forms another wrinkle.

Diagrams and charts lay scattered below his eyes.

Head on hand on desk-- the lamp's light

when looked at directly, causes its shape

to repeat itself with every blink and eye's movement.

If he looked out the window

he'd see the lamp's ghosted image

instead of the stars.

-Rachel Thompson,

Penn-Griffin School for the Arts

KARINA MCCORKLE: NC STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARDS

      Karina McCorkle has been awarded Second Prize (High School Division)in the NC English Teachers Association's 2010 Student Poet Laureate Awards for her poem VESTIGE.  Karina recently shared some details about her background and interests. She will read her poem and receive her award at the NCETA Annual Awards Luncheon at Wake Forest University late October.

I am a 17 year old senior at Enloe Magnet High School who has lived in North Carolina all my life. I have wanted to be a writer since I was six, when another girl told me I could not draw rainbows properly and dashed my dreams of being an artist. I have always been more of a prose writer than a poet, but the Poetic Voices and Writer's Studio electives at Enloe (taught by Priscilla Chappell and Joyce Nelson respectively) have opened me up to a lot of new poets in the past two years, and I have suddenly found myself almost more of a poet than a writer of prose. Amongst my favorite poets areJeffrey McDaniel and Sherman Alexie, and I have a weakness for T.S. Eliot's "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock". When not reading or writing, I am involved in a medieval sword fighting group where I am currently learning rapier and in a puppet troupe at my church.

Vestige

My grandmother was built of cigarettes.

everything smelled like her smoke

house, car, self.

skin so papery

I could feel the ash shifting underneath

like sand in a rag doll.

Her scent permeated our bodies

arriving home, we

scrubbed ourselves raw.

when she died

I wanted to never bathe again

so I wouldn't forget her.

Then I remembered

that I had been breathing her in

my whole life

the pale interior of my lungs

stained black

with her love.

--Karina McCorkle

EDWARD MADILL: FIRST PRIZE IN NCETA'S HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT LAUREATE AWARDS

Of this poem, the first place winner in the High School Category of the Student Poet Laureate Awards, Cathy Smith Bowers said--"Oh wow! This young poet is amazing!"

Ed is now a freshman at UNC-Asheville. While at Smoky Mountain High School, he volunteered to help with the Friends of the Library, among other organizations. He will receive an award of $250 and, of course, a certificate at the Fall NCETA Conference at Wake Forest University. I hope he can come read this poem. He's a fine reader of poetry.

Your Mom

Your mom thinks she can talk

To animals.

Which is cool….

But I still get freaked out,

Especially when she looks my cat in the eye and

Sincerely asks him

“What’s wrong?”

To this my cat licks himself

(there were a couple of grungy spots).

He saunters over to the litter box and pees.

I smell a whiff of ammonia.

Your mom sulks to the living room couch,

dejectedly,

Audubon prints hanging in the

corner.

Your mom thinks she can talk

To animals.

Which is cool….

But every time I see her walk past your “pets”

(The man you keep in the hamster cage,

the woman that lives in that cute miniature house

Out in your front yard,

Or even you—

With your nice nose and your okay figure),

I want to say:

“Hey!

Not only did you confuse the

Piss out of my cat,

But none of us know

What’s going on in your head….

Which is not cool.”

And I still remember that day when you asked:

“Doesn’t everyone’s mommy talk to animals?”

And for show and tell you brought in a poem,

Dictated to your mom by your parakeet.

And all the while

In the background of your house,

People whisper unheard syllables

About the sun, the moon, and the stars

(And maybe

Something about the circle of life,

Our place in the world, and all those questions

That keep us up at night)

To the thinning air,

Near the only window in your house.

Edward Madill

2010 NC STUDENT POET LAUREATE AWARD WINNERS

Here they are, the winners of the 2010 North Carolina Student Poet Laureate Awards, sponsored by the NC English Teachers Association. Final judge was our current Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers. Because I like to mix things up a bit, I'm posting most of their photos in no particular order. These poets will have their own posts in the coming days, so that you may enjoy their poems on a daily basis and help them celebrate their accomplishments. They will be honored at the NCETA Awards Luncheon on Oct. 22 at Wake Forest University. For more information about the NCETA student writing awards, please go to www.ncenglishteacher.org.

Rachel Thompson, Penn-Griffin High School

Edward Madill, graduate of Smoky Mountain High School, now at UNC-A.

Abrianna Berry, Caitlin Parris, and Lindsey Dodge, Macon County Middle School

Mandi Dean, Smoky Mountain High School, Sylva, NC

Nina Oteria Foster, Raleigh Charter High School

Karina McCorkle, Enloe Magnet School, Raleigh, NC

2010 NC Student Poet Laureate Winners

High School

First: Edward Madill, “Your Mom,” Smoky Mountain High School, Sylva, NC

Second: Karina McCorkle, “Vestige” Enloe Magnet High School, Raleigh,

Honorable Mentions:

Ripples or Pages, Rachel Thompson, Penn-Griffin High School, High Point

The World's Music, Mandi Dean, Smoky Mt. High School, Sylva

Leaving it Behind, Nina Oteria (Foster), Raleigh Charter High School

Summer of 1918, Tori Eaton, First Flight High School, Kill Devil Hills, NC

Middle School:

First: (tie) Lindsey Dodge, “Everything,” Macon Middle School, Franklin

Caitlin Parris, “Kathy,” Macon Middle School, Franklin

Second: Abrianna Berry, “Squirrel Hunting with my Dad, “ Macon Middle School, Franklin

Honorable Mention:

Falecia Metcalf, “Child of the Wind,” N Buncombe Middle School, Weaverville

Addie Fairchild, “Mountain Jefferson”

6th grade, Westwood Elementary

Jefferson, NC