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Student winners of the annual Jean Corrie Poetry Competition will join poet and competition judge BJ Ward in reading their work at an ice cream social 4:10 p.m. today in the Faculty Dining Room, Marquis Hall.
Held annually, the competition is sponsored by the English department and Academy of American Poets. It is part of Lafayette’s celebration of National Poetry Month.
Meghan Jackson and Andrew LaCroix earned first prize in the contest, which is open to first-year, sophomore, and junior students.
Jackson, a sophomore from Yokosuka, Japan, won the blue ribbon for “Spare Telephone Poles.” LaCroix, a first-year student from Wilton, Conn., also took first place with his poem “The Rain Falling on a Deserted Street Corner.”
Honorable mention went to first-year students Marianna Macri of Malvern, Pa., for “Broken” and Sara Nersesian of Sparta, N.J., for “The Truth I Came to Know.”
“All of the poems that I entered in the contest, including the poem that won, were written this January during my interim trip to Ireland,” says Jackson. “I wrote poetry almost every day in Ireland, and my inspiration was the beauty of the land.”
Jackson leads a Bible study for Lafayette Christian Fellowship and belongs to Philosophy Club and International Students Association.
LaCroix plays bass in the Lafayette orchestra and enjoys skiing.
A Trustee Scholar, Macri will star in the College Theatre production of The Real Inspector Hound April 23-26. She is assistant arts and entertainment editor for The Lafayette and a member of Student Alumni Association and Lafayette College Choir. She also volunteers through Lafayette’s Landis Community Outreach Center.
Nersesian wrote a letter to the editor about reality television that was featured in the Feb. 27 issue of The New York Times (see related story). She participates in the student Phone-A-Thon and is a Meals at Third Street volunteer through the Landis Community Outreach Center. She will serve as a resident adviser next year.
Winners of Lafayette’s MacKnight Black Poetry Competition will share their work 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, in the auditorium of Kirby Hall of Civil Rights. Poet, novelist, and law professor Lawrence Joseph is judge of this year’s competition. Open to seniors, the contest is named for MacKnight Black ’16, who at the time of his death in 1931 was one of America’s most significant poets.
Ward has written three books of poetry, the most recent being Gravedigger’s Birthday. After Ward and the four contest winners read their work, the podium will be open to audience members who would like to share their original poetry.
Ward’s work has appeared in Poetry, TriQuarterly, Natural Bridge, Puerto Del Sol, Mid-American Review, The Painted Bride Quarterly, The New York Times, and Long Shot. It has also been featured on New Jersey Network’s “State of the Arts” program. His poem “For the Children of the World Trade Center Victims” was cast in bronze and acquired as part of the permanent collection at Grounds For Sculpture, an outdoor sculpture museum in Hamilton, N.J.
Ward was named Distinguished Teaching Artist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for 2000-2003, as well as Teaching Artist of the Year by Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in 1999. He teaches poetry at New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts and in 2002 joined the resident faculty at The Frost Place in Franconia, N.H.
He has been awarded fellowships by New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Alliance for Arts Education.