Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
January 30, 2002
St. James School boasts 27 soon-to-be published poets
Poetry exercise helps pupils find their voices, teacher says
By Alwen Bledsoe
Countless children have read or seen that magical Harry Potter scene where thousands of fluttering emerald ink letters announce to Harry that he's no ordinary boy — he's a wizard. Now students at St. James School are reveling in their own letters — letters decorated with colorful fireworks, letters that tell them they are also more than ordinary, that they are published poets.
Creative Communications based in Utah publishes "A Celebration of Young Poets" each year as a part of its poetry contest. Less than 50 percent of the entries are selected for publication in the anthology.
Twenty-seven middle school students at St. James will be published in this year's anthology. The school has also received a Poetic Achievement Award, given to only 10 percent of entering schools in recognition of the number and excellence of their published writers.
Publication was a hard-earned reward. Barbara Ford, language arts teacher for sixth, seventh and eighth grades at St. James in Denver, required 14 poems from each sixth- and seventh-grader and 16 from each eighth-grader. And these were not of the free form, "spontaneous overflow" type. Ford's list of requirements included sonnets, ballads and haikus, among other traditional and teacher-created forms. The students each picked their three best for submission to three separate contests.
The Register visited Ford's seventh grade language arts class to talk with some of the poets.
"When you were all finished you felt like you had accomplished something," Lorenzo Armijo said.
Classmate Emily Brown agreed.
"It was hard `cause we didn't know a whole lot of the poems we were doing, but it was fun `cause we got to express what we feel."
Though many of her students wouldn't list poetry as one of their favorite pastimes, Ford said, many still expressed pride in finishing a hard task.
"And the ones who had a hard time with other kinds of writing, I think they found their voice through poetry," Ford said.
John Yohannes is one of those students who doesn't like poetry. He doesn't even think he's a very good writer, he said. But one day his teacher found him in the music room and brought him some good news.
"I was surprised," he said. "I was surprised that I got my letter and that I was actually in a book."
Many students, Ford said, wrote about the Sept. 11 attacks or about losing a grandparent or a pet. Grace Shearrer, Senite Sahlezghi and Johanna Lopez were three of the students who wrote about the terrorist attacks.
"It helped me deal with it, and I sort of understand it, but it was personally my feelings about what happened that day," said Sahlezghi.
Shearrer looked at it from a philosophical point of view.
"What inspired me is kind of how we humans take life for granted but then fear death," she said. "It's kind of an oxymoron, and not only in Sept. 11, but also in our abortion stuff. It's just we endlessly kill by it but we still fear death. That was kind of my perception of how it didn't really make sense, we're kind of hypocrites."
For Lopez, the poem became a kind of wish list for our post-Sept. 11 country.
"Well, I just thought that our country could be better and stuff and wrote this poem called `I Wish.'"
Among those wishes are peace and joy and happiness, she said.
For Ford the contest represents the accomplishment of her goals to sharpen writing skills and to give her students a taste of success.
"I want them to feel proud of their work and to know that they have a voice through their writing," she said.
The anthologies will be published and available in early spring, Ford said.
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