Melissa Crowe is the author of
Dear Terror, Dear Splendor (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in the
Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Four Way Review, POETRY, and
Thrush, among other journals. She coordinates the MFA program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she teaches courses in poetry and publishing.
INTRODUCTION
Certainly there are things I wish my younger self didn’t have to wait so long to discover about writing that emotional power lies, so often, in the most unassuming, daily, and personal of details; that compression is a superpower; that formal constraint can give rise to freedom, sometimes (almost paradoxically) by limiting the field of choices, sometimes by forcing a revelation the freest verse would let us avoid. Honestly, though, I think my young self might have some things to tell
Lily Nguyen, a senior at Lancaster Country Day School, was named the winner of the 2021 Poetry Out Loud competition, South Central PARTners at Millersville University announced in a press release last week. The regional contest is part of a national program to foster students appreciation for poetry though memory and performance.
âWinning this contest was honestly a huge surprise for me,â Nguyen wrote in an email. âBy helping me strengthen my love and skill of poetry recitation, (Poetry Out Loud) has been an extremely rewarding experience that I believe every student should take part in.âÂ
For the regional contest, Nguyen and five other students from across Lancaster, Berks and Schuylkill counties were tasked with memorizing and reciting poems selected from the Poetry Out Loud online and print anthologies. Due to COVID-19, recitations were recorded and submitted digitally. The studentâs video entries were judged by a panel of poets and creatives includi