Three students from Chester High School won the Chesters Public library Poetry Competition. The winners in order include Nico DeGuzman in first place, placing Revolution Chaput in second, and last but not least third place Jason Sibley. Ms. Rana Hodge, an amazing English teacher at Chester High School also wrote a poem as an entry contestant. She was placed first in the adult poetry category.
Winners and runner-ups will read their poems at a special reception at the public library on April 12, 2025 at 10:00 am. The public is invited to attend this reception and congratulate the winners of this year’s poetry competition.
I had the chance to interview our local poets about their experiences with poetry over all. I asked them each three questions: What inspires you to write poetry? What are some of the challenges you have faced as a poet and how have you overcome them? What advice would you give to aspiring poets? They all had very beautiful, encouraging, and meaningful answers.
I first asked Ms. Hodge these questions. She then responded with, “I am inspired by my daily life, the things I have gone through in the past, and the people I love. I write a lot about my daughter, my partner, my sister, and my best friends. I also write a lot about heartaches from the past that still need a little healing. My advice to aspiring poets is to write from the heart. It doesn’t have to be fancy. My favorite poems are “real,” or, in other words, they tell a story from a real-life experience. Metaphors are great but a genuine slice of life, in my opinion, is better. It can be really hard to get recognized as a poet, whether you are young and just starting out or, like me, have been writing poems for decades. I always tell my students to submit, submit, submit. Submit your poems everywhere. Eventually, someone will notice. You’ll get published. You’ll win that prize. It just might take longer than you’d like.”
Jason Sibley mused, “I like to write about things that I experience, music, cook up random things in my head, or combine attributes that I think would go well together. Like, normally for my Creative Writing class, I like to write horror short stories, but I also had to write a poem for this. So, I combine them. I, like every writer, face writer’s block. But I think my biggest challenge is doubting that my work is liked by other people. I have always been an OK writer, never a great one, or even a very good one, so when people tell me they like my writing, I get nervous. I would say write, write, write. The only way to get better is to practice. Don’t give up when it gets hard. Its not that your writing is bad, you just haven’t found the right audience yet.”
According to Revolution, “everything inspires me to write! The world is alive and so, so colorful; there is some great kindling inherent to the gossamer that stretches across fields or the way our voices will trip and scrape over themselves when caught on an idea. I think poetry is a good vehicle for expressing our less conscious sensory perceptions. Prose has a way of immersing a reader as though they are the character that’s culminated between hundreds of pages and sleepless nights. Poetry, however, is less of a simulation and more of an invitation; it speaks its secrets into the reader and hopes they will carry them forever. And I think I’d much prefer to live somewhere behind the ancient sea foam of metaphor than putting into words this tangible reality that I often fail to recognize myself in…
The biggest thing I have struggled with is impatience. I like to take whatever’s rolling around in my head and stain the page with it, leaving too-large brushstrokes and ineffectual smudges. My ideas are little ghosts that I really don’t want sticking around in my head, so I trap them in old houses with stained-glass windows, dress them up and sell them to unsuspecting visitors. But poetry requires precision. The ghosts have to have some reason to exist. This level of soul-searching I find deeply discomforting, so the poems that include my entirety—filleted, plated, and ready to be consumed—are few and far between. When I choose to let my guard down, they are frequently the boldest, most creative, and most vulnerable of my works. We will always be working to overcome ourselves because we feel so separate from the process. But progress is constant. I have improved by persistence, just as everyone inevitably will.
Advice for poetry is difficult to give. There are the emotional aspects (write what you feel. Always. Your story is valuable and deserves to be heard), the technical aspects (write what you want. Poetry isn’t easily confined, and it shouldn’t be. Recognize where your voice has been influenced, what patterns you tend to employ, and accept these. This is your voice. You cannot truly challenge yourself until you’ve been well-acquainted with your comfort zone), and its purpose (have reason to write. The last thing you want is for this written extension of you to feel too vacant or familiar. You want to offer your reader a memorable experience reflective of you, your ideas, opinions, etc., presented in a way that will be easily translatable, while still structurally and/or acoustically enjoyable). Format, meter, and rhyme schemes can all be fun to play with when exploring how best to display your ideas, but this is dependent on your individual vision for the poem. And, of course, use figurative language. Make connections that you wouldn’t otherwise think to make. The backbone of any poem is its creativity and its willingness to take risks. Most importantly: have fun!”
These students show and express how much they enjoy and love poetry. I believe that each and every one of these contestants has a very unique and strong voice. I know that they can do anything and go anywhere if they just put their mind to it. So again congratulations to each one of you. If you run into these very talented students and great teacher – congratulate each of them on their hard, amazing work.