This is the tenth year former Big Sandy High School graduate Ellaraine Lockie has provided the English students at BSHS the opportunity to participate in the Walter Gerson Poetry Contest.
Each year Ellaraine Lockie judges students’ poetry, makes comments about the poems and awards students for their excellent poetry and participation. This year is no exception. There are several cash prizes and several honorable mentions.
Each year the students in grades eighth through twelfth compose a poem. They are all mailed to Ellaraine Lockie in California. Lockie, a published poet whose poems appear monthly in “The Mountaineer”, makes her only requirement for the poems is that they be in free verse.
She judges all of the poems, decides on three money winners and several honorable mentions and then mails them back. She funds the prizes each year from her own pocket. This is a very special cause for Lockie and so appreciated by the rest of us. The Big Sandy school has appreciated Lockie’s willingness to allow the contest each year.
Once again “The Mountaineer” will print all of the poems. Thanks to Big Sandy students, Ellaraine Lockie and Sarah Pugh for sharing them with the community. We are a little late at getting them in the paper this year.
First Place Winner
Reminiscence for Rent, By Sophia Reichelt
And I hope when you see a bag of red, twisted candy you remember the color
of my tongue after half the bag disappeared.
And I hope when you see a pair of sneakers with worn out soles you can feel
my cold feet under the blankets.
And I hope when you hear ridged notes on an out-of-tune piano you remember
the private concerts we held in the middle of my living room.
And I hope when you smell sunflowers and tea you remember the aubergine
sweater that hung off my shoulders and carried the scent of home.
And I hope when the wind blows you remember the hairs on my head that always fell from their ties.
And I hope when you feel alone you come find me, please come find me.
