Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize Winner
More than 1,500 high school students submitted to our annual Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize, and we’re thrilled to announce the results. The winner is Naomi Ling, an eleventh grader from Columbia, Maryland. Of her winning poem “Haibun for Cantonese, ‘The Bird Language,’" Ruth Awad says:
“Haibun for Cantonese, the Bird Language” is a complex and accomplished poem as fully in flight as its guiding metaphor promises. Rich with imagination, the poem deftly explores the speaker’s multifaceted relationship with their native tongue while navigating the pressures to assimilate – an experience many first-gen readers will recognize. There’s so much to admire here: the language, the sequence underpinned by the speaker’s age, the evolving perspectives, the poised and compelling voice. Each time I read this poem, I peel back another exquisite layer of this intimate emergence. I will live in that space for quite some time.
Naomi Ling’s poem will be published in The Kenyon Review and she will receive a full scholarship to the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshops.
Ruth Awad also picked two runners-up: “paradigm shift” by Aamina Mughal, an eleventh grader in Seattle, Washington, and “Because I Am Young, Stubborn, and Covered in Skin” by Evan Sandifer, an eleventh grader in Charleston, South Carolina. The runners-up will also be published, and each of them will receive a partial scholarship to our Young Writers Workshops.
Click here to read Ruth Awad’s comments about the runners-up.
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