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Five U.S. Teens Selected to Serve as National Student Poets

Five high school students from across the country have been chosen from among thousands of award-winning poets to serve for a year as National Student Poets, the nation’s highest honor for youth poets presenting original work.

The National Student Poets Program (NSPP) is a partnership of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, which presents the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the nearly century-old program known for its recognition and celebration of the country’s most creative teens.

Representing five geographical regions of the nation, the 2019 National Student Poets are:

  1. Christian Butterfield (Southeast), a junior at Bowling Green High School in Bowling Green, Kentucky
  2. Julie Dawkins (Southwest), a junior at Deer Creek High School in Edmond, Oklahoma
  3. Taylor Fang (West), a junior at Logan High School in Logan, Utah
  4. Salma Mohammad (Midwest), a junior at Hamilton Southeastern High School in Fishers, Indiana
  5. Alondra Uribe (Northeast), a junior at Theatre Arts Production Company School in The Bronx, New York

The National Student Poets were selected from students in grades 10-11 who submitted more than 20,000 works in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and received top honors in poetry. From this pool of National Medal recipients, 35 semi-finalists are identified as the most gifted young poets in their regions, based on their originality, technical skills, and personal voice, and were invited to submit additional poetry and performance videos to distinguished jurors for the final selection of the five National Student Poets.

The Student Poets will be appointed by the Director of IMLS, Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew, on July 17, 2019 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. The ceremony will feature remarks by critically-acclaimed poet Joy Harjo, as well as a performance by nearly two dozen young NSPP alumni. A livestream and recording of the ceremony will be available on the IMLS website.

Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew said, “IMLS congratulates these five talented students, whose works meld the arts, sciences, and humanities and highlight the many narratives and questions that help shape our lives. During their upcoming year of service as poetry ambassadors they will reach communities within shared spaces such as museums, local libraries, and schools.”

Throughout the year, the Poets will serve as literary ambassadors and will share their passion for poetry, literacy, and the literary arts with their communities and at libraries and museums throughout their regions. This will be done through service projects, workshops, and public readings. In addition, each poet will receive a $5,000 academic award.

All student submissions in consideration for the National Student Poets Program are judged by literary luminaries and leaders in education and the arts based on exceptional creativity, dedication to craft, and promise.

Regarding the Class of 2019, Christopher Wisniewski, Executive Director of the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers commented, “The Alliance is proud to celebrate these remarkable young poets and to amplify their voices at museums, libraries and schools throughout the coming year. It has always been our mission to support the creative expression of students and provide opportunities for young artists to build on their crafts and share their talents with their communities. We are confident in these five exceptional poets’ ability to elevate the medium and engage others through poetry, and are excited to see all that they accomplish.”

The National Student Poets Program has showcased the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success for audiences across the country since its inception in 2011. The 35 National Student Poets have participated in community service projects, visiting more than one hundred cities, performing at more than eighty national poetry events, and mentoring hundreds of future poets. The Poets have traveled to libraries, museums, youth centers, reservations, and hospitals, and worked with military-connected youth, rural youth, and special-needs children. They have performed their work numerous times at Lincoln Center and the White House.

“Being able to learn from my fellow National Student Poets has given me some of the most powerful moments of my life,” said alumni Alexandra Contreras-Montesano, Class of 2018 National Student Poet. “Poetry teaches connection, and NSPP connects you with the world.”

If you are reading this post from an email subscription, you’ll likely have to link through to the site to view this video of student poets.

This post is courtesy of the following organizations:

The National Student Poets Program—a collaboration of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers—strives to inspire other young people to achieve excellence in their own creative endeavors and promote the essential role of writing and the arts in academic and personal success. The program links the National Student Poets with audiences and neighborhood resources such as museums and libraries, and other community-anchor institutions and builds upon the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ long-standing work with educators and creative teens through the prestigious Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. More information on the NSPP can be found at .

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s libraries and museums. We advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development. Its vision is a nation where museums and libraries work together to transform the lives of individuals and communities.

The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, a nonprofit organization, identifies teenagers with exceptional artistic and literary talent and brings their remarkable work to a national audience through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Founded in 1923, the Awards program is the longest-running, most prestigious initiative of its kind, having fostered the creativity and development of millions of young people through opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarships. During the past six years alone, students have submitted well over a million works of art and writing, and the program has provided more than $30 million in scholarships and awards for top participants.

ABOUT

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Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)(July 2019)
Upcoming in digital publications:
* Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review (July 2019)
* The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice (August 2019)

A busy though bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Levure littéraire, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, Woven Tale Press, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a virtual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor. I’ve been featured on The MethoBlog, on the Plumb Tree’s Wednesday Poet’s Corner, and several times as Second Light Live featured poet.

Email me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, reprint rights, or comissions.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

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TWITTER: New Policy for Government Officals and Political Candidates with more than 100K followers; social media and politics/presidency

Content of tweets according to Pear Analytics News (3.6%) Spam (3.8%) Self-promotion (5.9%) Pointless babble (40.1%) Conversational (37.6%) Pass-along value (8.7%) / public domain chart

“In a study done at New York University in 2015, an analysis and comparison of the Twitter accounts of Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, found observations showing the goals of each candidate’s Twitter during their respective primary elections. Some comparisons that were made were the use of Aristotle’s theory of Rhetoric. The research found that Donald Trump used pathos, the appeal to emotion, in his rhetoric; Bernie Sanders tended to use ethos and logos for his Twitter; Hillary Clinton tended to use logos and pathos to try to convey her values, and Jeb Bush shows that he uses a mix of all three on his account. The study also looked at the media response to the tweets during the election. The study found that the tweets became more persuasive for the candidates if the media put the tweets in front of more viewers, versus less powerful if they were only visible to those already on Twitter. In that way, presidential candidates who had their tweets covered more in the news were able to get their message to more potential voters.” Wikipedia

In response to reports that Twitter announced it would begin labeling and possibly flagging tweets from national political figures, PEN America issued this statement:

“Twitter’s newly announced policy appears to strike a careful balance in responding to the dual imperative of enforcing the platform’s own policies about abusive behavior while also protecting the public’s right to access the unfiltered views of political figures and government officials. Of course the test will be in the implementation, and in ensuring that the policy does not excessively encumber access to information for constituents and other users; the plan to use this tool sparingly appears to be a good one,” said Summer Lopez, Senior Director of Free Expression Programs, PEN America.

“Social media provides unique and important opportunities for direct engagement between political leaders and the public, which should be protected.  That said, words can have consequences and the words of political leaders can be especially piercing and potent.  If this policy inspires a more considered approach by political leaders to their tweets, that may be a good thing.”

If you are viewing this post from an email subscription, you’ll likely have to link through to the site to view this Washington Post video, “How social media is changing the presidency.”

 

RELATED

This post was compiled courtesy of Pear Analytics, PEN American, Wikipedia, and the Washington Post.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. 

ABOUT

Testimonials
Disclosure
Facebook
Twitter

Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
* Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review (July 2019)
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)(July 2019)
* The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice (August 2019)

A busy though bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, Woven Tale Press,Metho/Blog, The Compass Rose and California Woman.

I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a virtual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor. I’ve been featured on the Plumb Tree’s Wednesday Poet’s Corner, several times as Second Light Live featured poet, on Belfast Radio and elsewhere.

Email me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions or comissions.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

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2019 U.S. Poets in Parks Artist-in-Residence: Steven Bellin-Oka

Poet Steven Bellin-Oka © Kenichi Oka

“My own work deals with cultural memory and how traumatic national events such as the Civil War are remembered, misremembered, reimagined, and reinterpreted by Americans living in later historical periods. As William Faulkner puts it in his novel Absalom, Absalom, ‘maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished.’ In other words, the past is never just the past—it co-exists with the present and shapes it, like double exposure on a piece of film.” Steven Bellin-Oka

The National Parks Arts Foundation (NPAF), the Poetry Foundation, the National Parks Service, and the Gettysburg Foundation announce Steve Bellin-Oka as the 2019 Poets in Parks Artist-in-Residence. Poets in Parks is a partnership expressly designed and curated to raise the profile of poetry as a vibrant and modern public art. Bellin-Oka is the second Poets in Parks resident. He will spend one month in residency at Gettysburg National Military Park with a $1,000 stipend.

Entrance to the Gettysburg National Park courtesy of Sallicio under CC BY-SA 3.0 license

“The beauty and variety of United States national parks provide fertile ground for growing dialogue around poetry, shared history, and art as a public service,” said Stephen Young, program director at the Poetry Foundation. “We’re excited to have Mr. Bellin-Oka continue these conversations as the new Poets in Parks resident. The relationship between the past in present in his work is well-suited to Gettysburg, where history is both commemorated and alive.”

Gettysburg and Beyond

The National Park Service’s cultural mandate to recognize and foster a democratic and participatory dialogue through the arts has never been more important. The current national debate about the representation and memorial of Civil War history provides an opportunity for education and discussion.

Bellin-Oka’s poems written during the residency will expand those conversations. He will begin his month-long residency at Gettysburg National Military Park in September, writing, leading workshops, and sharing his poetry in a public reading on October 11, 2019. After his residency, he will travel to Washington, D.C. and to the Poetry Foundation in Chicago in May, 2020 on a poetry tour with the first Poets in Parks resident, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejoa, a first generation Chicana born and raised in San Gabriel, California

A Poet Connected to the Past

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Bellin-Oka grew up surrounded by Civil War battlefields; he takes the not-so-ghostly presences of history seriously, and intends to explore them during his time at Gettysburg.

He plans to write poems that imagine Abraham Lincoln preparing to give The Gettysburg Address, the experiences of soldiers on both sides, and new works in response to Civil War poems of the battlefield.

Bellin-Oka earned his MFA from the University of Virginia and his PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he is a 2019 Tulsa Artists Fellow, awarded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. His debut collection, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, won the 2019 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, and will be published by the University of North Texas Press in 2020.

RELATED:

Poems online by 2019 Poets in Parks Artist-in-Residence, Steven Bellin-Oka:

Poems online by 2017 Poets in Parks Artist-in-Resience, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejoa: 

This post complied courtesy of The Poetry Foundation, The National Parks Foundation, Wikipedia, and Steven Bellin-Oka’s and Xochitl-Julisa Bermejoa’s websites.

*****

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative literary prizes and programs.

You can follow The Poetry Foundation and Poetry on Facebook and Twitter.

*****

The National Parks Arts Foundation is a nonprofit organization offering artist-in-residence programs, museum in-loan programs, and workshops nationwide at a number of national parks. To apply to open programs, visit HERE. .

The Gettysburg Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic, educational organization operating in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS) to preserve Gettysburg National Military Park and the Eisenhower National Historic Site, and to educate the public about their significance.

ABOUT
Testimonials
Disclosure
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Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
* Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)
* The Damask Rose Garden, In a Woman’s Voice

A mostly bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove,I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a vitual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

 

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Opportunity Knocks: Six Calls for Submissions and One Competion

“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

“So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.”  Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Of Note: 

Opportunity Knocks replaces Sunday Announcements. I post it when there are enough leads. Many leads are only announced on The Poet by Day Facebook Page.

Links to articles, events and news of interest to poets and writers are regularly published on The Poet by Day FaceBook Page.  

You are welcome (encouraged) to share your work and announcements on The BeZine Arts and Humanities Facebook Group Discussion Page. 

MARK YOU CALENDAR: SEPTEMBER 28, 2019 is 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE, GLOBAL, 2019 and THE BeZINE 100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE VIRTUAL EVENT, with Michael Dickel as master of ceremonies. Look for updates on this site, The BeZine,  and at 100tpc.org

Join us for this week’s WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT, Sojouner and Stranger; poems submitted on theme in response to Wednesday Writing Prompt are posted on site the following Tuesday, making a lovely collection for poets and readers.   

CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS

ABOUT PLACE JOURNAL is open for submissions of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction an other prose, and aduio/visual artwork through August 1. No submission fee. No payment. Details HERE.

BRYANT LITERARY REVIEW is published once a year in May and opens for submissions from September 1 – December 1 (mark your calendars)  of fiction up to 5000 words and poetry and photography and artwork for their cover. No submission fee. Payment is two copies. Details HERE. 

CARVE MAGAZINE short story, poetry, and nonfiction submissions year-round from anywhere in the world. No submission fee if you are a subscriber. Paying market. Details HERE.

THE HUNGRY CHIMERA publishes fiction, poetry, and photography and is open for submissions. Details HERE.

IRON CITY MAGAZINE is accepting submissions of short fiction, nonfiction, poetry, one-act plays, and art through July 21. Submissions are welcome from “current/former prisoners, current/former prison volunteers, family and friends of prisoners, and current/former prison staff. Current/former prisoners may submit work on any topic. Prison volunteers, family, friends, and staff should submit only work on prison-related memories, perspectives, or insights …. To accommodate prisoners who do not have computer and/or internet access, we accept both electronic and mail-in submissions. Additionally, we accept both typed and handwritten work. There is no submission fee. Please see the guidelines below for each category.” Details HERE.

THE OFFING is open for submissions of art, essay, memoir and fiction. No submission fee. Paying market. Details HERE

COMPETITION

NARRATIVE 11TH ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST is open to all writers, and all entries will be considered for publication. $1,500 First Prize; $750 Second Prize; $300 Third Prize; Ten finalists receive $75 each. Entry fee is $25.

“We all need people who delight in our words.”
L.L. Barkat, in Rumors of Water

ABOUT
Testimonials
Disclosure
Facebook
Twitter

Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
* Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)

A mostly bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove,I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a vitual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton