NEW YORK — Five high school students, residing far from each other while sharing visions of community and self-expression, have been named National Student Poets.
Each of the poets will represent different parts of the country. Robert Gao of University Laboratory High School in Champaign, Illinois, will cover the Midwest. Marcus Burns of Vermont’s St. Johnsbury Academy will be based in the Northeast. Nadia Wright of Murrah High School in Jackson, Mississippi, will be the poet for the Southeast. Sofia Kamal of Rancho Solano Preparatory School in Phoenix, Arizona, is the student poet for the Southwest and the West’s regional poet is Anya Melchinger of Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu.
The National Student Poets Program (NSPP) is a partnership of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the nonprofit Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, which presents the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, whose winners helped form the pool of student poet finalists. The poets, each of whom will receive $5,000, will spend the next year engaging with young people through readings, workshops and other projects.
“We proudly recognize the Class of 2024 NSPP poets, whose remarkable talent and artistry will shine throughout their year of service, inspiring communities across the nation,” IMLS Acting Director Cyndee Landrum said in a statement Thursday. “We celebrate the collective energy of libraries, museums, schools and communities, working together to create safe harbors where young artists can thrive and flourish.”
In their own work, the students draw upon family background, the natural world and the struggles to endure.
In Burns’ “Yiping’s Asian Market,” he remembers the hardship of his grandmother and how “Her sacrifice brought us to America, something to be grateful for,” while Gao’s “Risky Hand” evokes “our father, adorned with the waxen spit from colleagues, candied in teething denim and Marlboros in orbit.”
Kamal, in the poem “Gas Station,” looks to the moon and finds it “lobed with/desire left unanswered, its edge rusted over/by centuries of eyes.” In Melchinger’s “sometimes i wonder how we sleep,” she shows is a house “where the ground breathes beneath us black soil expanding/and contracting with the rain sending cracks into the foundation rattling/our paper thin walls.”
Wright’s “Where I’m going” is an ode to the country and her own “sweet and sour” upbringing in the American South. She dreams of “long hugs from strong women/whose never rest/whose souls never quit” and savors “rich German chocolate cake/sweet, sweet homemade lemonade/Oh, just the thought of it/makes my mouth water.”
