Mel Xiao ’18 has won the first annual New Jersey Youth Poet Laureate Contest! In addition, Young Se Choi ’18 and Ezra Lebovtiz ’18 earned “Judge’s Choice” awards, and a “poem of place” by Katy Kim ’18 was selected for online publication.
Three 2017 New Jersey Youth Poet Laureates were selected to represent North, Central and South Jersey: Mel Xiao, a junior from Livingston; Eileen Huang, a High Technology High School student from Holmdel; and Nicole Tota, a Cherokee High School student from Marlton. These three winners will represent North, Central, and South Jersey, respectively. Writers Theatre will present them with opportunities to perform and share their work throughout the state and their poems will be published later this year. Each winner will also receive a Governor’s Award.
According to Writer’s Theatre Artistic Director John Pietrowski, “This project is part of the National Youth Poet Laureate Program, run by Michael Cirelli of Urban Word in New York City. It has an enormous national presence. The winning writers will each have five of their poems printed in the national anthology, compete for a Northeast Region prize that includes an anthology of the winners work, and finally, have the opportunity to become the National Youth Poet Laureate. Additional performance opportunities will be available both in state and regionally.”
Over 165 students submitted 830 poems this year. Each student had to submit a Poem of Place, which literally or metaphorically describes where the poet lives. Forty-one poems of place from this year’s competition, including “Late Note” by junior Katy Kim, will be collected and published on the Writers Theatre website and combined with a visual component to create a virtual poetic map of the state of New Jersey, which allows readers to find out about the places those poets are from through their poetry. Additionally, “Judge’s Choice” poems will be published online at www.wtnj.org. These include poems by juniors Young Se Choi, Ezra Lebovitz and Mel Xiao.
This year’s NJ Youth Poet Laureate competition was judged by professional poets and writers that include New Jersey State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellows, Pushcart Prize nominees, and more. The judges were Eloise Bruce, Arthur Wilson, Penny Harter, Meghan Privitello, Joseph Rathgeber, David Keller, Claudia Cortese, Gabor Barabas, Peter Murphy, and Nancy Scott. “All of the judges are well-recognized New Jersey-based professional poets,” said Pietrowski. “Our goal was to bring these writers into the rich community that is New Jersey Poetry.”
Bravo, Mel, Young Se, Ezra and Katy!