Downers Grove North student Emma Wilson has won a national award for her poetry
Downers Grove North High student Emma Wilson has been named a 2017 National YoungArts Foundation Merit Winner in the Writing/Poetry category. She is one of 691 students nationwide who is receiving this recognition as a promising young artist, representing the top eight percent of applications received and adjudicated by an independent panel of highly accomplished artists.
As an award winner, Wilson will receive opportunities to participate in YoungArts programs nationwide and engage with renowned mentors. For more information about the National YoungArts Foundation, please visit http://www.youngarts.org/.
“YoungArts is thrilled to announce our 2017 Winners, all of whom represent the very best of the next generation of artists in this country,” stated Carolina Garcia Jayaram, the president and chief executive officer of Young Arts.
“Emma is a gifted writer, and we are proud of her for receiving this prestigious national award,” says North High Principal Janice Schwarze. “Her poetry is beyond her years, and I can’t wait to read all of the poems she has yet to write.”
One of the four poems Wilson submitted to the contest follows; it is based on an obituary she read in the paper:
OBITUARY 2--NO TITLE
my mother keeps things for the purpose of using them later
(I don't)
friends and things, collected across countries
(I don't)
people who can roll their tongues in little circles
(I can’t)
it’s genetics
(ours)
of broken ovaries
the end of the bell curve
in January of 39 Sikorski says
war cannot be localized
(in July of 39 says bombs do not scare them)
(in November of 39 says we will fight back)
in March, Abba Kovner fights to pierce
the veil of English
in 39 says do not trust those
who try to deceive you
(carrying dynamite)
(carrying paralysis)
my mother keeps people like jewelry
(in glass boxes)
sewing histories with no thread
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