Lamont Younger Poets Announced, Read Poetry with Jenna Lê

By: Alia Bonanno, Jessica Huang, Valentina Zhang

Seeing through the eyes of a likely already extinct bird, meeting God in an Arby’s parking lot, a man’s struggle to reconcile debilitating sickness with societal standing, and the story of a political refugee wandering the streets of a harsh world. Maeve Kennedy ’24, Priya Nwakanma ’23, Clark Wu ’23, and Philip Avilov ’23 were awarded the 2021 Lamont Younger Poets prize for their carefully crafted pieces this past week, each of which highlighted their unique literary talents.particu

Students may submit poems for consideration each year. According to the description, “The Lamont Younger Poets Prize honors poems of exceptional promise written by juniors (ninth-graders) and lowers (10th-graders)... The prize commemorates the dedication of English instructor Rex McGuinn to student poetry at Exeter—particularly his encouragement of student poets at the ninth- and tenth-grade levels. In such a spirit, the Lamont Younger Poets Prize seeks to recognize promise as well as achievement in the early years of a student's developing craft.”

Head of Lamont Poetry Committee and English Instructor Matt Miller said, “Once all the poems are in we read them over and over and try to find the ones that stand out above the other. We discuss poems and try to come to a consensus. The hardest part is when we get down to 8 or 9 poems that are excellent but then have to choose just four.”

Miller explained the key components of the committee’s criteria. “We look for original or refreshing use of language and imagery, the way that the line and the sentence and syntax are used, and a sense of the music and rhythm,” Miller said.

The four winners have their poem published in a chap book that is stored in the Class of 1945 Library, and are invited to read their poems to the Exeter community alongside a Visiting Poem. This year, the English Department invited Jenna Lê, an Asian-American writer who centers her pieces around themes of immigration and femininity. Lê read her poems over Zoom this past Tuesday, and answered questions from students in a brief question-and-answer session after her reading.

Lê, who uses classical characters and themes in her writing, spoke on the mystery embedded in Greek mythology. “These stories have been with us a long time, and they've been with me… There's something about them that sticks with you,” Lê said. “As you don't know their stories, I think part of their lasting power is that you know you read them at different times in your life and different things in the story jump out at you each time.”

Besides using mythology to captivate readers, Lê varies the poetic styles she chooses to make each poem unique. “I like to keep practicing the different forms so that I have all those different forms in me,” Lê said. “The poem picks the style it's written in… The goal is to make every poem sound different from every other poem because you're basically combining the subject with language in a new way that's never been heard before.”

Lê emphasized her love for the writing process and the challenges that come with it. “I love the feeling of flow when you're in the middle of writing,” she said. “But sometimes you're just at the beginning of the poem and you don't really know how to get into it… The hardest part is having the faith to know you've gotten through these dry spots before; you can get through them again. You just you just write until you get through them.”

To all writers and poets, Lê offers the following advice: “Don't let external forces discourage you. You guys all have amazing voices; you guys have amazing talents and not every poem you write is going to be your best poem. There are going to be poems you look back at in a few years and think about ways you could have written them differently and that's okay. You can always change it; they're not carved in stone. Just believe in yourself, and read a lot.”

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Avilov submitted the poem, “Immigrant Song: an Angry Letter to Ventian Pigeons,” which focuses on the story of a political refugee in Venice, who wanders the streets aimlessly as he remembers his life before then. Themes of existentialism and divinity are prevalent throughout, as well as the complexities of discovering a new home, a new universe.

Avilov’s inspiration draws from his own life. “The character, he's not the same as me; however, ‘Letter to the Pigeons’ is about leaving one place not because you want a bright future, but because they will break you and I resonate with that,” Avilov said. “I moved around a lot [growing up] and I never knew what home was: maybe it's a country, a city, a house. Sometimes I defined it as a place where my immediate family was. This poem is not an answer, but I'm writing a means of asking that question.”

Avilov views writing as a way to escape and express, which informed his stylistic and word choices in “Letter.” “I am largely driven by confusion. If I don't get something, first thing I [do is] write about it,” Avilov said.

Avilov was grateful to win the prize, especially considering it would allow others to view the poems. “I'm really glad that there was an opportunity to have people see my poems in the first place… I didn’t really have expectations,” Avilov said. “I'm also excited to see what other people wrote, because it's a good way to crawl into their heads to see how their brain works, you know?”

Avilov’s advice to budding poets mirrors his approach to his work: “Don't be scared of words. What held me back most was the fear that my work was just not important enough, that there wouldn’t be a revelation or something… [But] it doesn't need to be like that… Just keyboard smash if you want to. As long as there are words on the page, you're going to get somewhere.”

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Wu chose to explore the theme of patriarchy in his poem “The Man.” Inspired by Naomi Snider’s book Why Does Patriarchy Persist?, Wu retold one of his grandfather’s stories. “The man is getting his lung surgery, and it's sort of implied that he has lung tumor, though you can sort of interpret it as you will. Then I look into how he dealt with this surgery. A large part of that is his quasi-backlash against his own family because of his understanding of mortality, manhood, shame and vulnerability. This poem asks what happens when our patriarchs realize that they are weak. Maybe they feign power and reclaim the role anyway.”

Wu has heard others interpret his poems in many different ways, and he hopes his readers enjoy analyzing it. “Once you share a poem, the meaning that you intend is often lost. That's never a bad thing. I hope readers enjoy themselves in reading the poem, and I hope it brings some awareness to our ever more patriarchal society.” Wu said. “What’s our role? What can we do? I don't think it's at the forefront of our minds right now because of all the other social issues at play, but it's in my opinion slowly slipping away from public attention. I think that's dangerous.”

Wu is thankful to have had so many people support his writing. “As someone who’s only just begun to dip their toes into poetry, I never saw myself as a student poet. Mr. Miller definitely gave me a lot of confidence through the winter and spring terms. He actively tries to understand what you’re trying to say and he offers the perfect dose of suggestion” Wu said.

The prize has greatly helped Wu take more risks in his poetry. “I feel very honored and very grateful for everything. I’m very lucky to have had many people help me in writing poetry and in helping me navigate the topics that I explore in poetry,” he said.

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Nwakanma’s poem, “Completely Rational Thoughts From the American South” describes one man’s encounter with God in an Arby’s parking lot, after a loss spurred him to bike across the country. The piece’s themes of religion and grief are conveyed through a combination of humor and metaphor throughout.

“In a less literal sense, it's about searching for faith, after you have gone through something that's caused you grief,” Nwakanma said. “When something's missing, we tend to look for something else to fill that space.”

The idea of loss her poem conveys was inspired by the story “Really Long Distance” from the podcast This American Life. “A man set up a rotary phone in his backyard, connected to nothing, and he used it as a place that he could say the things he'd left unsaid when his cousin died. After the 2011 tsunami/earthquake in Japan, many people had lost loved ones and heard about this phone, then came to say the things they needed to say,” Nwakanma said. “There's nothing really extraordinary about the phone other than the meaning imbued in it by these people.”

Nwakanma also described the changes she made to her poem during the writing process. “The original title was not a title at all (it was a reminder of the original episode) and the poem used to just be about the woman with the payphone—like in the short story. As the idea of loss developed, I started writing something different and at the last minute added the woman back in as the 'mother' to provide context and flesh out the idea of individual grief; she’s searching for closure, but she keeps getting a dial tone.”

Nwakanma’s love for writing poetry stemmed from her love of reading. “I think at some point, you want to try to create your own stories,” she said. “I have more of a disjointed writing style, and I find that poetry is a lot easier to bring many ideas together."

Nwakanma’s appreciation for language also brought her to love writing. “Language is special for the way it colors how we see the world. For example, in certain languages, there's not a color for blue and people just don't recognize it,” Nwakanma said. “In kind of the same way, the stories we read affect our perspectives. The stories we write have the power to affect other people's perspectives.”

For aspiring poets, Nwakanma leaves the following advice: “Trust your voice, but don't trust it so much that you eschew criticism.”

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Kennedy wrote her poem, “The Lord God Bird,” from the perspective of an ivory-billed Woodpecker, a species that is likely extinct. She was inspired by a book she read in seventh grade, The Race to Save the Lord God Bird by Phillip Hoose, which tells the story of the extinction of the ivory-billed Woodpeckers. Through her poem, Kennedy hopes to shed light on the effects of human development on endangered animals through depicting the experience of the ivory-billed woodpecker as a war.

While Kennedy began the poem thinking about the benefits of environmental conservation, she made connections to other topics she is passionate about. “The last part of the poem is sort of about wanting to be remembered. What I was thinking about as I wrote was, I'm very interested in queer history. And a lot of times when you're reading [queer history], it's a bunch of tragic stories over and over again. You feel like all the people who came before you are just dead, or, have this tragic thing happening to them and you want to honor their memory, but you also have the feeling of dread, of ‘maybe this is going to happen to me.’ But the bird and the poem is like, no, I want to be able to be recognized by people and have people come and see me,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy attributes many of her ideas to daydreaming. “I've been writing since elementary school and I'd have these notebooks of terrible, dystopian stories. I'm someone who fantasizes a lot and daydreams a lot. So I guess it's like, it would be unproductive if I didn't put at least some of them down on paper, you know? You gotta milk that for what it’s worth.”

Kennedy advises: “Don't try to start out from a huge, deep topic and then try to connect it to something smaller. I feel like that's really difficult. But start out from something that, you know, maybe you're interested in or you know about, that's a more mundane topic. And then you'll probably make a connection from there.”

“Even if you don’t make connections to a deeper topic, I think a lot of poetry is just about seeing what you can do with language. So even if there isn't a crazy, deeper meaning, you still reached the goal of poetry, if you made something that you think sounds good,” Kennedy said.

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Miller encourages aspiring poetry writers to continue to write, no matter the obstacles or rejections. “There are so many good submissions each year and choosing just four is hard. Those not chosen should not be discouraged. Keep writing. It shouldn’t be about contests or prizes. It should always be about the words,” Miller said.

Miller also provided tips for upcoming writers: “Read everything—from poetry to scientific theory to the back of cereal boxes. Listen to the words in the air in conversations. Do everything. Live. Play with language. And don’t worry about publication and prize validation. Write for you.”