Student poets honored at Hilda Simmons Levitt Poetry Awards ceremony
April 26, 2009
The annual Hilda Simmons Levitt Poetry Awards ceremony was held Thursday, April 23, in the Wagner & Brown Auditorium of the Allison Fine Arts Building. The featured speaker for the ceremony was Thom Satterlee, a professor and translator who teaches English at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. Mr. Satterlee read from his award-winning poetry collection, Burning Wyclif, which won the Walt McDonald First-Book Series in Poetry Prize, and was a 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Award Finalist, and an American Library Association Notable Book.
From left, Robert Merkett, Ross Feeler, Carol Schwartz (daughter of the late Hilda Simmons Levitt), Angela Ellis and Thom Satterlee (visiting poet and judge of contest)
The Hilda Simmons Levitt Poetry Contest — with more than $1,000 in prize money going to the winning poets — has been called one of the most prestigious in the state. It was established in 1988 by the late Stanley Levitt to honor his wife’s memory, and her love of poetry and Midland College. Hilda Simmons Levitt graduated with honors in journalism from Louisiana State University where she also studied under poet Robert Penn Warren. In 1979, at the age of 62, Mrs. Levitt decided to pursue writing again. For the next seven years, until her death in 1986, she studied creative writing at Midland College. The contest is now underwritten by Mrs. Levitt’s daughter Carol Schwartz, who lives in Washington, D.C.
First Place
W. Ross Feeler
“Absolution”
“Before I Fall Asleep”
“I Am Thinking”
“On a Sunday Afternoon”
“The Surgeon”
Second Place
Robert Merkett
“Sunday Morning”
“My Mother’s Bus”
Third Place
Troy Farris
“Invisible”
Fourth Place
Angela Ellis
“Unspoken”
Honorable Mention
Anna Antony, “Dreaming,” “Carnival”
Diahn Berry, “Pink Chiffon”
Trudie Borgen, “Arachne the Argiope Aurantia”
Kaleigh Campbell, “Love is a Terrible Curse”
Scott Carlson, “Night Upon a Sandy Beach”
Christine Carrillo, “A Mother's Symphony”
Linda Ellis, “Today’s Rain”
Genelle Felio, “To My Dad”
Rebekah Karth, “Statues of Time”
Amy Kelly, “I Wish”
Brittany Miles, “He's Inside of Me,” “Galilah's Tremble”
Susana Ortega, “Morphine Dreams”
Condoa M. Parrent, “ A Prayer for Macie,” “Letting Go”
Cassandra Raffaelli, “My Love”
Elissa Russell, “Splendor”
Andre’ van Eeden, “Beautiful?”
|
