2019 Lamont Younger Poets Receive Awards
This year’s four Lamont Younger poets—prep Kendrah Su, lower Scarlett Lin, lower Felix Yeung and prep Daniel Chen—won the prizes this past Tuesday after an anonymous judging process.
The contest, created in 2004, is directed towards lowerclassmen poets to raise awareness of and to support student poetry writing at the prep and lower levels, English Instructor and Chair of Lamont Poets Committee Todd Hearon said.
Under her teacher, English Instructor Chelsea Woodard’s advice, Lin chose to enter the competition. “I encouraged both sections of lowers that I teach to submit, and think it is a wonderful opportunity,” Woodard said.
Lin entered her poem “Girl Before a Mirror,” from a previous assignment where she modeled a poem after Pablo Picasso’s famous painting “Girl Before a Mirror.” “One of my favorite artists is Pablo Picasso. His stylish approach of imitating the way children draws inspire me to take on his viewpoint, and articulate my feelings through poetic language,” Lin said.
Through her poetry, Lin hoped to convey a message of self-love, represented by the girl in her poem looking into the mirror and reflecting on her image. “Sometimes we tend to comply to social norms and allow others’ opinions to skew our own perspectives,” Lin said. “It is easy for one to zoom in onto his/her natural flaws and set aside the beauty that shines within.”
“[The girl in her poem] is seeing all these realistic flaws but she’s not really seeing what is beautiful inside of herself,” Lin said.
Woodard praised Lin’s stylistic choices in creating a unique and personal poem. “I thought the voice of the poem was very compelling, and that there was a very delicate, precise quality to the imagery and lines,” she said.
Chen also entered the contest under the encouragement of his English Instructor Ellee Dean. Chen, who originally wrote the poem earlier this year, shared a story about his grandmother who lived through communist China. “I was inspired to write about it after my grandmother told me about how when she was a child, she would have to literally look for usable coal in burning dumps outside of factories. I found this both terrifying and incredible, and I wanted to capture this experience,” he said.
Yeung entered the contest to get involved with poetry. “I’ve always been an ‘English type,’ but I’ve never seen myself as a poet,” he said. “Poetry has been a style that has always challenged me.”
Yeung wrote about the experience he had with other travelers at the Customs and Border Control in the airport just after leaving Hong Kong for Exeter. “This poem is a love poem to America, to how this country has shaped me. Despite its shortcomings, the United States has played a role in my maturation,” he said.
Su submitted to the contest on a whim after seeing the poster in her English teacher’s classroom. Su’s poem was based off a poem she wrote in 2018 and portrayed the effects of events through generations.
Su was happily surprised to find that she won the prize, but did not focus too much on the validation aspect. “It does mean the world that the people in the Exeter community are the ones judging my work and getting this award means more than it does getting an award from strangers,” she said. “However, I don’t think my confidence should come from awards and what other people think of my writing; it should come from within.”
The winners read their poems Tuesday night in the Library’s Rockefeller Hall alongside this year’s spring Lamont Poet Adam Vines, who gave an assembly earlier that day.
Lin notes that the Tuesday reading was a platform to spread her message. “It just warms my heart that people would come up to me and say my poem speaks to them in an insightful manner,” she said.
Lin continues that the award itself also gave her the confidence to continue exploring poetry. “Poetry let me sense the power of words opening up inside my chest when I read them out loud,” she said. “I now see poetry as a way to carry my story and message forward, across culture and beyond time, saying this is who we are and this is where and what we come from.”