This award is to encourage and recognize the literary talents of all public and private high school students in Glynn County. Originality, creativity, content and style will be the basis of the judges’ decisions.
The students’ work will be blind-judged by a three person panel made up of poets, writers and educators. The students’ name and school will be deleted from their manuscripts before being sent to the judges to ensure impartiality.
One winner will be selected from the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. Each winner will receive a $250.00 cash prize and be invited to read their poem in a public presentation arranged by Golden Isles Arts and Humanities Association. The winner will also receive the designation “Poet Laureate of the ____ Grade” and a certificate to prove it.
Weather
by Eve Merriam
Dot a dot dot dot a dot dot
Spotting the windowpane.
Spack a spack speck flick a flack fleck
Freckling the windowpane.
A spatter a scatter a wet cat a clatter
A splatter a rumble outside.
Umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella
Bumbershoot barrel of rain.
Slosh a galosh slosh a galosh
Slither and slather a glide
A puddle a jump a puddle a jump
A puddle a jump puddle splosh
A juddle a pump a luddle a dump
A pudmuddle jump in and slide!
***
Hatteras Calling
by Conrad Aiken
Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.
Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollow in triumph a passage to the main.
Umbrellas, and in the Gardens one old man
hurries away along a dancing path,
listens to music on a watering-can,
observes among the tulips the sudden wrath,
pale willows thrashing to the needled lake,
and dinghies filled with water; while the sky
smashes the lilacs, swoops to shake and break,
till shattered branches shriek and railings cry.
Speak, Hatteras, your language of the sea
scour with kelp and spindrift the stale street:
that man in terror may learn once more to be
child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.
***
Poem
by Frank O'Hara
Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up
***
Weather
by Hettie Jones
My folder of poems
labeled "weather" holds
no clues as to whether
or not there'll be any
weather to count on, say,
a hard rain like "little nails," or
that deluge "plunging radiant"
now that we've plunged into war
and wars don't stop like rain stops
like the last slow drizzle
"dissolving like salt"
on the old tin bathroom vent
sweet hint of growth
in the soft wet drift north
fire or ice, fire or ice
are you breathing, are you lucky enough
to be breathing