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2025 Sam Ragan Awards Day

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 23, 2025| 4 Comments »

 . . 
[with poems by winners of the NC Poetry Society Adult Contests]
 . . 
The Atheist
 . . 
Her playground shoes
teem with sand and mulch.
She kicks them against
the passenger seat,
floorboards anointed
by the debris of recess.
 . . 
From the altar of a booster seat
she asks who I love more
her or Daddy,
as she wraps a clutch of gold hair
around a hooked finger –
 . . 
its end a wet fireless wick.
I tell her I love them both
more than anything.
She is fast
with first grade
scripture –
 . . 
how Haley says you
must love God more
than anyone.
I reach for her knee,
that sprig of branch.
Through
 . . 
tears
she says she loves
me more, too.
 . . 
Claudine Moreau
First Place, Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Rodanthe
 . . 
You watched the cottage
pitch and yaw on its stilts
 . . 
writhing in video frames
until it slides sideways
 . . 
into the surf, you said
Why do people build there?
 . . 
A fair question given
a rising sea. Next day’s sun
comes bathed in lavender,
dolphins chase each other
across the living room’s picture
window, terns dive feeding fish,
 . . 
tiny sea-turtles wriggle
from warm sand behind
 . . 
the garage. You can only dream
this life, this view, this broad ocean
 . . 
of where you’ve come,
screaming that fiery
 . . 
breath, beckoning you
home, stepping through the glass-
 . . 
door to ride down
this swaying deck, down,
 . . 
down to the licking crests,
slipping beneath
 . . 
the darkest water.
 . . 
Michael Loderstedt
First Place, Bruce Lader poetry of Witness Award of the NC Poetry Society
read at Awards Day at Weymouth Center by Joan Barasovska
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 
Life is a swaying deck. What will save us? Better to hold tight and imagine it is not going to burst beneath us, or to leap, eyes closed or eyes open, into the void? Some mornings the drone of mowers from the next block is a comfort that summer is coming and all is as it should be; other mornings their incessance is another bitter reminder that for some people life still follows its benevolent routine. Swaying, we are swaying and gravity and balance elude us.
 . . 
I sit on the porch with the book closed before me. An hour passes. Why would I want to read these poems that some judge somewhere has deemed are worth sharing with the world? Why would I want to share any more of the world’s troubles or its implied triumphs? Well, I don’t want to, but finally I open the book anyway. Page after page. The faces of these poets as they read at Awards Day appear to me, or my mind conjures a face and a voice for the ones I don’t know. And, well, at times I have to smile.
Fleeting but with at least a moment’s healing. And where the swaying may take writer and reader down, down into the darkest water, I see that the world wants to share with me, no matter what it is I may want. At last, after the final poem, I remember Rule #2: I will cry with you.
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Front Hallway
 . . 
Nine births
eight named
if only
for a day
six
children living
laughing bickering squealing
muddying up the house
on the table there
between the bible’s leaves
a whisper
of hair
a sunny towhead
the memory
too
fragile
for a name
 . . 
Laura Alderson
Second Place, Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award of the NC Poetry Society
 .. 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Madame Butterfly
 . . 
“Mom looks great,” my brother proclaimed
on a quick visit after she had endured
pneumonia and sepsis.
 . . 
Maternal astronaut orbiting
the son, she ignored her tubed tether,
the hiss and click of oxygen concentrator
at apartment’s center, and served
weak tea and sweet biscuits
before alighting on a chair,
delighting in his quips.
 . . 
A monarch-embroidered kimono,
porcelain foundation and blood-red lipstick
masked her sallow visage, haggard physique.
 . . 
When we were little, she fluttered
through the house each evening,
tidying rooms, readying her face,
donning heels, before our father’s headlights.
shot through the shutters like lightning,
and thundering, he flung
open the door.
 . . 
Jennifer Weiss
Honorable Mention, Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
The Adult Contests of the North Carolina Poetry Society are open each year from December through January. Details and Guidelines, as well as a list of all the 2025 winners, are available HERE:
 . . 
Poet Laureate Award: Judged by the North Carolina State poet Laureate and sponsored by Kevin Watson (Press 53)
 . . 
Robert Golden Award: Endowed by Nexus Poets and Linda Golden
 . . 
Charles Edward Eaton Award for sonnet or traditional form: Endowed by an anonymous donor
 . . 
Mary Ruffin Poole Heritage Award: Endowed by Pepper Worthington
 . . 
Bloodroot Haiku Award: Sponsored annually by Bill Griffin
 . . 
Poetry of Courage Award: Endowed by Ann Campanella
 . . 
Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award: Sponsor initially by David Manning and annually by Susan Carol Hayman
 . . 
Bruce Lader Poetry of Witness Award: Sponsored annually by Doug Stuber
 . . 
Katherine Kennedy McIntyre Light Verse Award: Sponsored annually by Diana Pinckney
 . . 
Alice Osborn Poetry for Children Award: Sponsored annually by Alice Osborn
 . . 
Jean Williams Poetry of Disability, Disease, and Healing Award: Endowed by Priscilla Webster-Williams
 . . 
Besides annual contests for individual poems by students and adults, North Carolina Poetry Society also sponsors: Brockman-Campbell Prize for best book of poetry published by a North Carolina author; Lena Shull Award for a poetry manuscript, including publication by NCPS; Susan Laughter Meyers Fellowship, including a one week residency at Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, NC.
 . . 

Sam Ragan; NC Literary Hall of Fame

 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
Green River
 . . 
Those summers we spent the afternoons rolling
down the levee by the mud brown river. We blew
dandelion seeds and helped my grandmother pick
rhubarb from the small patch of garden she kept
behind her shack. We fill in love with what rural poor
people have: sunlight and sky, the work of their hands.
My grandmother taught me how to live with mice,
their unsuspecting necks snapped while bacon fried
in her pan. She was not sentimental of mice
or men. She told me it was as easy to love a rich man
as a poor man. She told me that the Kentucky rain
poured over her garden, over the ugly river because she missed
her daddy’s farm. She braided my hair while we listened
to Judy Garland sing and skip her glittery heels down
the yellow-brick road. I never felt richer than when
I was in her lap, her calloused fingers rubbing my ears, practicing
my spelling bee words. C-h-r-y-s-a-n-t-h-e-m-u-m, rolling
over my tongue like a tiny thimble. Honey, you’re going to leave
this place one day. Her needle and thread nearby. The tired
Singer machine propped on the kitchen table.
 . . 
Brooke Lehmann
First Place, Robert Golden Award of the NC Poetry Society
 . . 
 . . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . . 
 . . 
…

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2025 Sam Ragan Awards Day – Students

Posted in poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on May 16, 2025| 4 Comments »

  . 
[5 poems by winners of NC Poetry Society student contests]
  . 
Fear
  . 
There I stood upon the water
Looking out to foreign lands
Separated by the oceans
I take a breath and clench my hands
I take a step and close my eyes
And jump across to the other side
I land in all the sandy rubble
And I looked back and saw a puddle!
  . 
Juliet Geracitano
5th grade, Audrey W. Garrett Elementary School, Mebane, NC
Third Place, Travis Tuck Jordan Award of NC Poetry Society
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
It is impossible to convey the enthusiasm and joy that radiates from these students as they step up to the microphone to read their poems. Some of them have to climb a rostrum to be visible behind the lectern. Some of them have arrived cloaked in adulthood. All of them lean in, open to the page which holds their lines, and when they have finished, look up at us with a glorious victorious smile. And they see us smiling right back as we applaud.
  . 
Each year the North Carolina Poetry Society sponsors five different contests open to students stratified by grade level, from 3rd grade through college undergraduates. Winning poems are published in the annual anthology Pinesong, and each May the Society holds Sam Ragan Awards Day at Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities to give these winning poems voice. The poems reprinted here are a small sampling of those read by their winning authors on May 10, 2025. Contact this site (comments@griffinpoetry.com) if you would like to purchase Pinesong, which also includes the winners of the eleven adult contests
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
The Reservoir
  . 
The sky has emptied itself, curving in cloudy
porcelain over the few dwellers, here,
trembling
and the small pieces of bare water
settle beneath.
  . 
Beside the bridge to Highway 73
(we’ve driven by it every week this November)
a heron bends double
  . 
with the draggled trees, ribs of logs soft with rot,
over everything the film of silk like
skin, exposed.
  . 
The reeds
and the heron’s feathers
and what’s left of the water
flutter with the dark wind.
  . 
The sky cannot protect them from this –
a huddling in the newly foreign crevices beneath
the upturned bowl.
  . 
Sometimes I think that the world pours out
all that it has – all of itself – on us
and still it is not enough.
  . 
Lillian Skolrood
9th grade, Sparrow Academy, Cornelius, NC
Third Place, Joan Scott Environment Award of NC Poetry Society
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
Pat Riviere-Seel served as this year’s judge of the Sherry Pruitt Award for students in grades 10 through 12. Besides her own numerous publications and writing awards, Pat has been a forceful and relentless supporter of the literary arts for decades. She offered this challenge to these students and to all of us:
  . 
I’m wearing several hats today, but the most important one is the one as your cheerleader. As I read the more than one hundred poems in the high school student contest, I realized just how fortunate we are in this state, in this country, to have a new generation of poets who use their poems to tell their truth, to shine a light on what is often a dark and disturbing time. Some of the poems were overtly political; others were intensely personal. All contained important truths and are necessary.
  . 
At this time in our country when the arts are under attack, when books are being banned, and our nation’s history and culture are being perverted by a political agenda of hate, please know this: Your words matter. Your poems matter. You are not alone. For every poem that you write, know there are at least a dozen more people who will find themselves in your words-their joys, their sorrows, their fears, their hopes and dreams. You-each one of you-are the only one who can write your poems. If you do not write them, no one will. And that would be a big loss.
  . 
The politicians and the performers will not save us. They may have political power at the moment, but words-your words-also have power. And that power-unlike political power-is lasting.
  . 
Poetry cleanses.  Poetry gives us back our soul, both individually and collectively. Keep writing. Be fearless. Do not ever let anyone censor or silence you.
– Pat Riviere-Seel
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
Fly Me to the Moon
  . 
There’s war in Ukraine, chaos in Gaza,
while I sit at the piano, looking at the keys.
  . 
It’s just practice, nothing to worry about, but
my eyes start to burn. I think of leaving, not
  . 
coming back. I look at the pages and look
at the teacher, ready to move on. I try
  . 
to sight read but can’t shape my hands
fast enough, left in the notes and chords.
  . 
The tempo is too fast, the piece once sung
by Sinatra. No tears come as I find the notes.
  . 
In another sky, I know there are missiles,
to destroy concert halls and opera houses.
  . 
After, I walk through a desert into the dark
abyss, shot by starlight, to a melancholy song.
  . 
Vicky Teng
10th grade, Marvin Ridge High School, Waxhaw, NC
Third Place, Sherry Pruitt Award of the NC Poetry Society
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
I Would Bleed
  . 
I want to be a wild thing
And soar high on feathered wings
I want to scar the dirt with heavy claws
And watch a vulture feed
  . 
I want to be untamable
And bite the hand that feeds
I want to escape this poison air
And I want to scream
  . 
I want to be the loudest beast
And roar louder than a waterfall sings
I want to stomp and dance without rhythm
And I want to breathe
  . 
I will be a guardian
And keep the tall grass green
I want to see the stars again
And for that I would bleed
  . 
Sam Kawalec
10th grade, R. J. Reynolds High School, Winston-Salem, NC
Honorable Mention, Sherry Pruitt Award of the NC Poetry Society
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
Pelmeni / Russian Dumpling
  . 
It is New Year’s Eve, and I am making pelmeni and thinking only of you.
Russian dumplings, I used to watch my mother fold them; delicately and properly.
She never let me do it.
I fold the flour into the dough, and it swirls in a cloud, landing on my shirt.
I am nineteen, but with this powdered coating, I am seven, and ten, and twelve again.
  . 
How do I love you?
I never learned it. It was not something I could watch my mother do.
I did not watch her and know how to touch. How to hold your hand, to grab you and say
I love I love you I love you; can you feel it?
  . 
I blunder through, an attempt to be gentle, but I am butchering it.
The meat is falling out of the dough, red against white. Flesh-like.
Is this what my heart looks like to you? Exposed, Unnatural?
My mother said if I don’t pinch the corners hard enough the entire pelmen will explode.
Let me patch it back up. Let me hide it away.
  . 
I place the finished ones onto a plate. They sit with a resoluteness that seems final.
‘Yes, here is my place on this plate.’
Oh, little dumpling, if you only knew the boiling pot that waits to greet you!
You will hiss as you enter and sink silently to the very bottom.
  . 
I plop the dumpling in, and a droplet of boiling water flies out and lands on my arm.
I jerk it away, instinctual.
How do the pelmeni do it? Hiss, and die, and resurface?
How much bravery in one small pocket?
  . 
I do not know how to ask for you.
I sit, pelmen-like, waiting for you to read my thoughts.
Waiting for you to understand the extent of my want.
How deep is it buried? At the very bottom of the pot?
  . 
Masha Dixon
Sophomore, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Second Place, Undergraduate Award of the NC Poetry Society
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
  . 
The Student Contests of the North Carolina Poetry Society open for submissions each year on November 1, with a deadline of January 31. Check HERE for guidelines and details.
Travis Tuck Jordan Award for students in Grades 3 – 5.
Endowed by Dorothy and Oscar Pederson
Joan Scott Memorial Award for poems about the environment, students in Grades 5 – 9.
Endowed by contributions in memory of Joan Scott and by the Board of the NC Poetry Society.
Mary Chilton Award for students in Grades 6 – 9.
Sponsored by Tori Reynolds
Sherry Pruitt Award for students in Grades 10 – 12
Endowed by Gail Peck
Undergraduate Award for students attending a North Carolina college or university or whose parents or guardians live in the state of North Carolina .
Endowed by the Judith C. Beale Bequest
  . 
  . 
❦ ❦ ❦
  . 
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Spring. Whatever.

Posted in ecology, Ecopoetry, Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2025| 2 Comments »

 . 
[with 3 poems by Kathryn Kirkpatrick]
 . 
Turbulence
 . 
Of the stomach lifting. Of the weightless
where I was and am again variety.
 . 
Sway and crack, our craft. Slalom
the wind. So much carbon in the currents.
 . 
Of the climate kind. Of the jerk and twack.
Of the hurtling toward. Shake right out
 . 
of our human. As if we might not
settle back into these bodies,
 . 
but land instead in someone else.
Yet the hare far below isn’t empty
 . 
to receive us. Neither is the horse.
They have their own embodied plans.
 . 
We will have to settle beside ourselves
Blurred boundaries and all. Bump,
 . 
rattle, and creak. Our enlightened selves
grasp cokes, play solitaire, read, sleep,
 . 
going on as if what’s happening isn’t.
With more than prayers
 . 
holding us up, we are nonetheless
tossed in the vastness.
 . 
Kathryn Kirkpatrick
from Creature, Jacar Press, Durham NC; © 2025.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
ah spring spring 
how great is spring! 
and so on 
Bashō (1644-1694)
 . 
Basho has perfectly snared my mood this morning. I am reading Spring haiku at SeasonWords.com: Ah, Winter vanquished!, Ah, new life!, blah, blah, blah. I am not feeling newly lively these days, especially not as the sun so gaily rises. By day I seem to be the rock between two storms, my father and my son, but by 4 AM I have eroded to sand and the bed is far too gritty for sleep. Now this haiku blog offers a prompt for the season and encourages sharing? Here are my Spring lines:
 . 
what to say
when everyone’s “spring, spring” –
toads trilling
 . 
In her book Haiku and Senryu: A Simple Guide for All, Charlotte Digregorio states, Wherever one lives, one experiences changing seasons. The haiku’s brief flash illuminates one specific moment. We read the terse lines and might recognize where we are, but certainly, and more critically, we do know precisely when we are. Perhaps we have never shared the haiku’s circumscribed space, but we do share the time of pollen, the humidity, crisp crackling leaves, the shivers. A moment’s experience broadens into a communal truth.
 . 
In that sense, haiku becomes less an instruction in encountering nature and more an invitation to shared humanity. Besides the experience of changing seasons, the thing we all share is the experience of suffering. A moment’s observation may stand in as a piercing metaphor: Spring’s anticipation, Summer’s lassitude, Autumn’s anxiety, Winter’s dread. And perhaps pricked by that dart of connection upon reading a haiku, we might also share one more thing – joy.
 . 
Just to be fair, I imagine my Spring haiku is not really an indictment of inane people chattering around me. On a dark night after rain, the lonesome trill of an American toad rising from down in the woods is a peace offering. My son and I stood on the deck last night and heard it together. Yes, it was very dark. This morning, light has returned. Again. Oh my. The season rolls on.
 . 
❦
 . 
In 1685, the Japanese astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai adapted the 24 Solar Terms of the Chinese calendar for Japan and created 72 seasons. As we learn at SeasonWords.com, these 72 seasons “offer a poetic journey through the Japanese year in which the land awakens and blooms with life and activity before returning to slumber.” Mark, the site’s curator and naturalist, shares lessons from nature corresponding to the seasons; haiku both ancient and modern that complement the lesson; and craft tips / kigo with a prompt and an invitation. Readers share their haiku and receive commentary.
 . 
Visit https://seasonwords.com/ and subscribe to receive periodic postings in your mailbox!
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The Ridge
 . 
1.
One day I found the outline of a deer
in the snow. She’d slept on the old logging road
above our home, curled against the cold.
 . 
Her imprint on a trail I’d walked for
twenty years was intricate and vulnerable
as I now feel since strangers bought this land.
 . 
their cameras
nailed to the trunks of trees
Christ
 . 
2.
At first I waved. New to the neighborhood,
the seemed shy. Hovering at the side
of the road with their harnessed dogs, they walked
 . 
harnessed too, shoulders hunched, eyes averted.
About their money I didn’t then know, or
Appalachian families letting go of land.
 . 
orange flags
festoon the property lines
orioles in snow
 . 
3.
What we had of commons among
hill people here is gone, our hollow hollowed
out, our waves, our lifted heads, our calls across
 . 
casual borders fretted now by registered
mail. “Not authorized.” “Legal action.” They’ve
no bonds to sunder because they’ve no bonds made.
 . 
camera 1
my shetland sheepdog framed
first day of spring
 . 
4.
Surveyed for surveillance, the ridge. But I
can love what I don’t own. I miss the oaks,
their wide-girthed stillness. I miss the mountain’s
 . 
spine. Across family lands and state lines,
through Cherokee and Appalachian time,
the mountains stay. The mountains stay. They stay.
 . 
a taloned sun sets
the red-tailed hawk
needs no human hand
 . 
Kathryn Kirkpatrick
from Creature, Jacar Press, Durham NC; © 2025.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Creatures – so we are. We seek what all creatures seek, but especially we seek the closeness of other creatures. Kathryn Kirkpatrick is visited by crows and grieves for house wrens dying and for cows separated from their calves. She reveals her creature’s struggle and confusion as she loses her mother. She is not afraid to say that she hesitates to speak of death because every creature must face death but fears to do so. She reveals moments and connections and we readers look about us to discover her light is casting our own shadow. And in the closing section of Creature, Kathryn Kirkpatrick has written the finest collection of dog poems I’ve read in twenty years.
 . 
Creature by Kathryn Kirkpatrick at Jacar Press: HERE.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
On Finding Monarch Caterpillars in September
 . 
And whatever love a parent
feels stealing bread for a starving
child, I have it as I dig by
the flimsy light of my bargain
headlamp, having driven miles for the last
of the chain-store milkweed, which will
feed these ravenous young in their striped
skins, who are no metaphor, who stand for
themselves only, though in my ecological
worry, my long-range fright, I am surely
standing for something as I shovel in the dark.
 . 
Kathryn Kirkpatrick
from Creature, Jacar Press, Durham NC; © 2025.
 . 
In their multi-generational migration pattern, the endangered monarch butterfly bears its fourth generation in September and October. Rather than dying after two to six weeks as the earlier generations do, this generation migrates to warmer climates like California and Mexico, living six to eight months before starting the process again. – K.K.
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 

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