When our Writing Workshop Facilitator, Paige Menton, announced to the group details about national poetry contest, ten-year-old Gioia M. of Mt. Airy was intrigued. The nationwide 2013 Sarah Mook Memorial Poetry Contest is an annual event that accepts submissions from students in Kindergarten through High School.
Entering the contest was not directly a part of the Writing Workshop, but rather an activity that each participant could choose to enter or not. Gioia opted to submit her poem, Far Out, to the contest in the grade 3 to 5 group. We are very proud to share the good news -- her poem was awarded first prize!
The poem emerged from an exercise in Writing Workshop; Paige presented the group with a list of words about space, and participants were encouraged to write poems using those words. Paige continues to spark our aspiring young writers by creating a safe creative environment where self-directed participants can chase their ideas as far as they wish, and is the reason our Writing Workshop is so popular year after year.
So, congratulations to Gioia for crafting such a beautiful poem, and to Paige for continuing to lead a writing workshop that inspires participants to create and share their work, not just among their peers but sometimes nationwide, too!
Without further delay, here is Gioia's poem, Far Out:
Far Out
Starlight
Reflecting on the mirror that is space.
Orbit
A chain
Designed to keep planets with their stars.
Stars
Clustering together to form a silent nursery.
Silence.
Universes
Millions of them, like balls on a pool table.
Concentric rings
Like jewelry
Adorn a gas giant.
Solar flares
Light up
The black sky.
Silence
Earthshine
Taking light years
To reach intelligence.
The Milky Way
A dusting of paint
On a black canvas.
Moonshadow
What creates
A lunar eclipse.
Silence.
Airglow
Plentiful on earth
Nonexistent near a black hole.
Pulsar
A light house
In the sea that is space.
Asteroid belt
A conveyer belt
Of stones.
Silence.
Burst
A more poetic word
For big bang.
Black hole
Nothing.
And always
Silence.
