MCLC: 2013 Newman Young Poet's Award

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From:  Stalling, Jonathan C. <stalling at ou.edu>
Subject: 2013 Newman Young Poet's Award
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2013 NEWMAN YOUNG POET'S AWARDS
Announced in Conjunction with the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature

NORMAN, OK ­ Four Oklahoma K-16 students have been chosen as the winners
of the 2013 Newman Young Poet's Awards. They are 1) Donovan Helterbrand, a
1st grader at East Side Elementary in Midwest City, 2) Aaliyah Elders, an
8th grader at Highland East Junior High in Moore, 3) Casey Cai, an 11th
grader at the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics in Oklahoma City,
and 4) Spencer McCoy, an undergraduate at the University of Tulsa.

The Four winners will each receive a $500 check and a commemorative
certificate at an awards banquet at OU this Thursday evening, March 7. The
event will be hosted by the OU Institute for US-China Issues.

The K-16 poetry contest was held in conjunction with the Newman Prize for
Chinese Literature, which is awarded biennially in recognition of
outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human
condition, and is conferred solely on the basis of literary merit. The
2013 Newman Prize will go to Yang Mu, a Taiwanese poet famous for his
integration of classical and modern Chinese and western poetic influences.
Mainland Chinese novelists Mo Yan and Han Shaogong won the 2009 and 2011
Newman Prizes for Chinese Literature respectively. Mo Yan has since been
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

To honor Yang Mu's poetry, this year's Newman Young Poet's Awards were
given to the best Classical Chinese jueju style poem written in English.
Jueju is a rich and complex art form that has been composed for nearly two
millennia. The method of writing jueju in English is just over a decade
and a half old, however. It was created by Dr. Jonathan Stalling at UC
Berkeley in 1997 at the request of the poet June Jordan, who, once having
heard Chinese poetry sung aloud, "wanted to hear its music in English."

Stalling formulated a way to compose English verse following all the rules
and regulations the form required of Chinese writers. Over the years, he
has taught the form as a way of sharing classical Chinese poetics with his
American college students and with others in outreach programs--from
homeless shelters and prisons to middle schools and writers colonies. This
is the first time, however, that jueju have been composed by so many
students across such a broad range of ages. There were nearly 350
submissions from every region of Oklahoma.

Donovan Helterbrand, a first grader from East Side Elementary in Midwest
City, was the Elementary school winner:

At    	night  cold     rain  	falls
Mouse  	runs   big  	brown  	halls
Mouse  	stops  huge     black   door	
He¹s  	scared dark     tail  	tall

His poem immediately jumped out as a contender from the beginning. Not
only did it follow all the poetic requirements of syllable counts and
rhymes, but it also managed to use the form to impart a stirringly
atmospheric narrative, both adorable and ominous in perfect measures. Note
the sensitive setting of the scene in the first line followed by evocative
images like "huge black door" and "dark tail tall" that signal a small
drama unfolding just out of view.

Aaliyah Elders, an 8th grader from Highland East Junior High in Moore, was
the Middle School winner:

crisp  air    frost   	filled  breeze
sleet  gleams ice     	cloaked trees
fierce winds  strength  takes  	lives
flakes fall   snow    	fills   seas

Her poem effortlessly addressed the required rules and regulations, and
included arresting images such as "ice cloaked trees," followed by a turn
in her third line toward a near apocalyptic yet beautiful image of a world
where "snow fills seas."

The High School category was the most competitive. Not only were there
plenty of well written verse, but more than a dozen young poets tried
their hand at the ³level two difficulty² form, which requires strict
parallelism for all words in the first three lines, requiring them to
compose the poems vertically and horizontally at the same time. Many did
accomplish this feat, but it was the more basic form that came out on top.
Casey Cai, an 11th grader from OKC's Oklahoma School of Science and
Mathematics won:

Dark  fog    low   gray   air
Dawn  gleams teal  sea    glare
Light rain   clear blue   sky
Look  up     dusk  swirls there

Casey¹s poem was one of three in this category that seemed to be Chinese
written in English. Of all the winners, hers was the best example of
thematic progression. It begins in the pre-light morning, shifting to
dawn, then to afternoon, and finally to a stirring twilight moment ­ all
within a line that grammatically evokes the ending of China¹s most famous
jueju, Li Bai's poem "Night Thoughts," which ends: "looking down, I miss
my old home."

Finally, the college winner, Spencer McCoy, offered the most original use
of the form:

Sparks drift     glints new    dew
Fire   flies     warm   breath blew
Cold   walks     close  fresh  bloom
Ice    burns     glare  eyed   blue

Spencer utilizes the inherent collage-like nature of the form to
illuminate striking world combinations where drifting sparks ³glint new
dew.² But there was something about this poem¹s final line that made it
stand out above the others: "Ice Burns, glare eyed blue." Here the poet
fuses the Chinese rhythm and imagery of the form with that perennial
western poetic device of metaphor remaking ice into an eye so blue it
becomes ice again.

For more information, please visit the Newman Young Poet's Prize
<http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/youngwriters.html> homepage. You can
also contact:

- Peter Gries, The University of Oklahoma, 405/325-1962.
- Jonathan Stalling, The University of Oklahoma, 405/325-6973.