PB POETRY FESTIVAL Applauds The Winners Of High School Poetry Contest 2022

Susan R. Williamson, Director of the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and Blaise Allen, Ph.D., the Festival's Director of Community Outreach, today announced the winners of the annual Palm Beach County High School Poetry Contest. The 18th annual Poetry Festival starts today and runs through January 15, 2022.

In addition to cash prizes, each of the five winning poets will also receive a one-year subscription to Poets and Writers Literary Journal, and their poems have been published online on the Festival's official website

(www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org).

The $200 first place prize went to Alyssa jean-Louis, from Royal Palm Beach, a senior at A.W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach. She won for her poem Heritage? Her sponsoring teacher is Ms. Brittany Rigdon.

The next four $100 winners are in order of their finish:

+ David Levinson, a junior at Jupiter Community High School, for his poem lost spaceman. His sponsoring teacher is Ms. Danielle Steyn.

+ Priya Gowda, from Jupiter, a freshman at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, for her poem Unbelonging. The sponsoring teacher is Ms. Rigdon.

+ Kaja Andric, from West Palm Beach, a senior at Dreyfoos School of the Arts, for her poem Ocean. Her sponsoring teacher is Ms. Rigdon.

+ Sarah-Lyse Kirsteen Exume, a senior at Wellington Community High School for her poem This Side of my Skin. Her sponsoring teacher is Ms. Silkia Aviles.

"This year the Palm Beach Poetry Festival High School Poetry Contest received nearly 200 submissions," says Dr. Allen. "We are grateful to our contest judge, Dr. Jeff Morgan from Lynn University in Boca Raton, for once again choosing this year's winners."

"The Poetry Festival has been honored to work with high school teachers throughout Palm Beach County for a decade and a half. We have visited hundreds of classrooms to discuss the craft of poetry and encourage students to write original poems. Every year we are impressed by the quality of their work. Many of our past winners have gone to college to become teachers themselves, and we are always hopeful that the students will continue to discover the delights that poetry offers us," she adds. "As celebrated poet Carolyn Forche has pointed out, you find in poetry, something that is not found anywhere else."

About the Palm Beach Poetry Festival 2022:

The all-virtual 18th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival will be held January 10-15, 2022. Among the highlights will be presentations by:

+ Special Guest Poet Yusef Komunyakaa, a recipient in 1994 of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Achievement Award.

+ Poet-at-Large Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a winner of both a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the prestigious Pushcart Prize.

The Palm Beach Poetry Festival's award-winning faculty poets in 2022 include Kim Addonizio, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Chard deNiord, Mark Doty, Yona Harvey, John Murillo, Mathew Olzmann and Diane Seuss.

The Festival is generously sponsored by Art Works of the National Endowment for the Arts, Morgan Stanley, The Legacy Group of Morgan Stanley's Atlanta, GA office, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, The Tourist Development Council of Palm Beach County; the Board of Commissioners of Palm Beach County, The Palm Beach Post, a grant from Visit Florida, WLRN-FM, and Murder on the Beach, Delray Beach's independent bookseller.

In 2010, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival received an Arts Challenge Grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and in 2011, it was presented with The Muse Award for Outstanding Cultural Organization (with a budget under $500,000) by the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County.

For more information about the 18th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival, including a full schedule and workshop descriptions, plus biographical information and links to the work of all featured poets, please visit the festival's website at www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.

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