KDL's Poetry Contest Produces Wise Words

The winners of Kent District Library’s 6th annual poetry contest, Word Wise, are writers of extreme talent. The judge of the contest in recent years has been David Cope, a highly renowned poet and professor at Grand Rapids Community College. Needless to say, he is a difficult man to impress. But when he was asked to judge the contest several years ago--he is not sure of the exact date--he had so much fun that he chose to continue to serve as judge. Given Cope's lofty reputation in poetic circles and his uncanny ability to select worthy poems, the contest is stronger for its association with him.
 
The contest starts in April; any young writer is eligible to submit his or her poems online at the KDL website or at the actual library. The librarians gather the poems together and select the best entries; after that they are sent to David Cope for the final judging. The ten winners are announced in May and each winner receives a $50 gift card to Schuler Books and Music. (The winning poems are available on the KDL website at:
www.kdl.org/kdl/pdf/2009TeenPoetryBook.pdf
 
This year's winning poems covered topics from love and loss, injured feelings on the playground and bad days at school, to the magic of the city at night, the inspiration of nature, and relationships with family members. Cope commented that he did not have a favorite poem this year; each one was a special surprise. He also shared that the voice of the poem is the most influential aspect when selecting winners for a contest. He looks primarily for a poem that has sharp clarity, expresses itself in images and avoids abstraction, singsong rhymes, and clichés. Cope was delighted with the Word Wise entries this year. Many were able to express clear images and confront difficult subject matter. The poem “I Miss You,” penned by Karen Ergang, chronicles the poet’s emotions after her grandfather passes away. This sobering poem is followed by the more lighthearted “Conspiracy Theory,” an extremely enjoyable poem narrarating everything going wrong on the way to school Katie Van Zanen’s short and to-the-point lines include“zipper- stuck open, locker- stuck shut. It’s only Monday.”
 
Other winners included Emily Oxford’s sequence of Haikus, “Nightfires,” which delves into the innermost secrets of nature as one girl tries to determine why “tears of cold” freeze upon her cheeks. Hannah Fleming’s “On Top of the Dune” conveys a day at the beach, trudging through the hot sand to reach the water, “a second sun-splitting sky.” Molly Tiesma’s “Claire De Lune” dives into the romanitc relationship of a man and woman intertwined with the music of a piano. In “The Invisible Circle,” Annie Livingston puts in words about the loneliness many children are faced with every day when considered “outcasts” by their peers. Her advice, “Next time you see one, cut the chain, Break the trend. Break the invisible circle.” Grace Feenstra’s two poems “City Night” and “Still” tackle contradicting subject matter, noise and silence. “City Night” is filled with noise and the “blur of millions of lives briefly meeting then going on their way,” while “Still” recalls a time of complete silence--“No noises only a symphony of thoughts.” Haley Smith’s “Breathe In” is an emotional poem deeply connected with the respitory workings of the human body. The poem begins with the speaker hanging up the phone, “Breathe out. Breathe in.” As the speaker tries to rationalize the conversation, she steadily breathes until the poem is through, the only constant that she can rely on. B. Joanna Chen’s “Haiku’s of You” reflects on a one-sided crush, “You plus me equals something? Not available.” The speaker expresses the evolution of her feelings as she realizes that she is able to move on, “I hold your sure face/ But time begins to erase/ Now how did it look?” In “I Think- My Brother Is A Robot” Eric Schroeder contemplates this fact that every sibling wonders at one time: “For him it’s the same old thing. Day after day.” The speaker’s brother is stuck in a routine that he cannot escape, but his brother still considers him his best friend.
 
Cope explains that judging teen poetry is different from judging adult poetry in that “the range of experience is less, and the poets are obviously beginners (though there are occasionally some quite sophisticated pieces which do surprise and please me). There's often a freshness of phrase if the writer has learned to see with her/his own eyes and observe closely. One does not expect complexity of thought or of stylistic elements as much.” Personally he is most inspired by “Poems that seize on hard experience, difficult subject matter, and confront it directly, compassionate without sentimentality, and which think through images, show elegance of phrasing, that clarity which can be quite elusive.”
 
Choosing only ten winners was the hardest part of David Cope’s job this year, he explains; “I treat the writing exactly the same way as in other contests, keeping in mind that everyone in this contest is youthful, trying to find her/his voice, often struggling with issues pertinent to youth. My own youth was troubled, and though I am older now, I have not forgotten how difficult that passage can be; I have a deep appreciation for it, and when I see a young writer honestly coming to terms with a difficult issue, it moves me. On the other hand, there's often a poem which shows an unabashed delight in some aspect of experience, something often lost on adult writers who have often hardened themselves so that they can't touch that "glad day" boy or girl that Blake named to represent innocence. I am very thankful for the librarians, too--keepers of the human spirit, kind, thoughtful professionals who care deeply for their charges.”