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English and international affairs major Sandamali Wijeratne ’06 (Mount Lavinia, Sri Lanka) won first prize in the MacKnight Black Poetry Competition for her entry “The Unsent Letters of Josephine.”
“Sanda is an accomplished poet and fiction writer,” says Lee Upton, professor of English and writer-in-residence. “She has a very rich imagination and is highly ambitious.”
Jesslyn Roebuck ’06 (Montgomery, N.Y.), also an English and international affairs major, was the recipient of two honorable mentions for her poems, “Homage to Time” and “Removing Our Overcoats.”
“Jesslyn is the first poet to win two honorable mentions,” Upton notes. “She is a strong scholar as well as a poet and had two presentations at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. She is now working very hard on poetry. She has a broad range as a poet and is highly dynamic with a special faculty for images.”
Open to seniors, the competition is named for MacKnight Black, a 1916 graduate of Lafayette, who at the time of his death in 1931 was one of America’s most significant poets. This year’s judge was renowned poet Lynn Emanuel.
“Lynn Emanuel was chosen because she is highly regarded with a finely honed wit,” says Upton. “She is dedicated to experimentation as a poet and her work broadens the art form.”
The winners spent the day with Emanuel April 20. She held a workshop in the afternoon, followed by a private dinner. In the evening, Wijeratne and Roebuck shared the podium with Emanuel during the MacKnight Black Poetry Reading.
“What we do that is really nice is bring in a poet of national recognition and the students get to have a dinner with them and also read before them on the podium,” says Upton, “It is quite an honor and I think it will spur them to continue writing in the future.”
Emanuel is the author of three books of poetry: Then, Suddenly— (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999); The Dig (1992); and Hotel Fiesta (1984). She has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes. She directs the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where she is a professor of English.