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[5 poems by winners of NC Poetry Society student contests]
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Fear
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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!
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Juliet Geracitano
5th grade, Audrey W. Garrett Elementary School, Mebane, NC
Third Place, Travis Tuck Jordan Award of NC Poetry Society
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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.
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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
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The Reservoir
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The sky has emptied itself, curving in cloudy
porcelain over the few dwellers, here,
trembling
and the small pieces of bare water
settle beneath.
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Beside the bridge to Highway 73
(we’ve driven by it every week this November)
a heron bends double
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with the draggled trees, ribs of logs soft with rot,
over everything the film of silk like
skin, exposed.
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The reeds
and the heron’s feathers
and what’s left of the water
flutter with the dark wind.
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The sky cannot protect them from this –
a huddling in the newly foreign crevices beneath
the upturned bowl.
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Sometimes I think that the world pours out
all that it has – all of itself – on us
and still it is not enough.
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Lillian Skolrood
9th grade, Sparrow Academy, Cornelius, NC
Third Place, Joan Scott Environment Award of NC Poetry Society
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Fly Me to the Moon
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There’s war in Ukraine, chaos in Gaza,
while I sit at the piano, looking at the keys.
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It’s just practice, nothing to worry about, but
my eyes start to burn. I think of leaving, not
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coming back. I look at the pages and look
at the teacher, ready to move on. I try
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to sight read but can’t shape my hands
fast enough, left in the notes and chords.
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The tempo is too fast, the piece once sung
by Sinatra. No tears come as I find the notes.
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In another sky, I know there are missiles,
to destroy concert halls and opera houses.
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After, I walk through a desert into the dark
abyss, shot by starlight, to a melancholy song.
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Vicky Teng
10th grade, Marvin Ridge High School, Waxhaw, NC
Third Place, Sherry Pruitt Award of the NC Poetry Society
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I Would Bleed
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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
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I want to be untamable
And bite the hand that feeds
I want to escape this poison air
And I want to scream
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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
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I will be a guardian
And keep the tall grass green
I want to see the stars again
And for that I would bleed
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Sam Kawalec
10th grade, R. J. Reynolds High School, Winston-Salem, NC
Honorable Mention, Sherry Pruitt Award of the NC Poetry Society
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Pelmeni / Russian Dumpling
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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Masha Dixon
Sophomore, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Second Place, Undergraduate Award of the NC Poetry Society
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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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V E R S E and I M A G E 
You are planting wonderful seeds. ---B