Adult Honorable Mention: Winter's OceanBrin Stevens of Merrimac
Youth Honorable Mention: A Winter Storm by Emily Jarmolowicz of Amesbury
Linda Sharron of Methuen really wanted to win The Eagle-Tribune/Robert Frost Foundation Spring Poetry Contest since its inception in 1983.
Beginning in 1985, she entered the contest repeatedly, eventually obtaining a degree in English to help her write poetry. Finally, she took home the coveted title of winner back in 1992.
"I was obsessed, that is the only way I can describe it," said the enthusiastic poet. "I thought, 'Finally I won.' I'll never write another spring poem in my life."
Then tragedy befell her family -- in the span of a year and a half, she lost her 14-year-old son and her father to cancer and her brother to a heart attack. The losses took their toll on Sharron and sent her into a depression that drained her will to write.
But slowly, Sharron healed and rediscovered her inner poet.
In a drawer, she discovered a poem she wrote several years ago, one she put aside before she started caring for her ill family members. About that time, she read the announcement for the 25th annual Eagle Tribune/Robert Frost Foundation Spring Poetry Contest. When Sharron saw the revamped rules allowing poems about any season, she decided to enter again. And win again -- she took top honors in this year's adult division in the category of summer poems.
"I am back, after all these years," said Sharron. "I am writing."
Sharron is one of four winners in the adult division of Spring Poetry Contest, open this year to readers from all Eagle Tribune Publishing Co. daily newspapers, including The Salem News, Daily News of Newburyport and Gloucester Daily Times.
In addition to the adult winners, there were also four honorable mentions in that division, as well as four winners and honorable mentions in the children's division.
In all, more than 750 poems were submitted. We asked readers to find inspiration in the work of local poets Robert Frost, John Greenleaf Whittier, Celia Thaxter and Anne Bradstreet, as well as the four seasons. The result was an avalanche of poetry, judged by the experts at Lawrence's Robert Frost Foundation.
Sharron's poem, "The Ballad of Smiling Light," was inspired by the tale of Abigail Burgess, a 19th century heroine who kept the Matinicus Rock Lighthouse bright and her invalid mother and younger sibling safe during two notably rough storms on the Maine coast when she was a teen.
"We haven't had a whole lot of material written about heroines," said Sharron. "I identified with her, and also with Celia Thaxter. I drew inspiration from Celia Thaxter when writing this poem."
Hannah James of Marblehead drew inspiration from the poppy field outside her house for her poem, "Royalty," which won in the summer category of the youth division. Though she wrote the poem before the field emerged from its wintery hibernation, she used her imagination to recall its summertime appeal.
"I imagined it with butterflies all around it, fluttering around," said the 11-year-old. "It's so pretty when (the poppies) bloom."
Hannah wrote the poem as part of a school assignment -- she does most of her writing in school, as did Rockport resident Dana Hartley, the fall winner in the adult division. Hartley wrote her winning haiku "First Frost" in graduate school 17 years ago.
"I woke up with the poem in my head," remembers Hartley, now a biologist, who dusted the verses off for this contest.
Beverly's January O'Neil wrote her poem, "Night's Work" more recently, but found inspiration in her mother's work in a neonatal intensive care unit in Virginia more than 20 years ago.
"I was thinking about what it was like to be my mother at that time, she worked at the NICU for many years," said O'Neil. "It was her sacrifice, being away from us, having to go back to this place that is both joyful and sad."
In a similar way, Suellen Wedmore's "When the Peepers Sing" took inspiration from a variety of sources -- the renewal inherent in spring, contrasted with the harsh realities of war.
"I wrote the original when we first invaded Iraq, but then I revised it for the contest," said Wedmore, who lives in Rockport. "Which is sad that it still works, because the war has been going on so long."
Happier topics occupied 13-year-old Hannah O'Flynn of Ipswich when she wrote her poem "Dandelion," inspired by Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."
But before the poem made its way to the contest -- and won the youth division's spring category -- O'Flynn won her English teacher's contest at Ipswich Middle School. As in many classrooms around North of Boston, O'Flynn's teacher challenged the students to compete there first to determine which poems from the class would be entered in the Spring Poetry Contest.
"That's really great, I am just honored," Hannah said about winning the newspapers' contest.
Ella Dorval Hall of Newbury had to win a similar contest at her school in Newburyport before her poem was entered. She found inspiration by reflecting on her everyday surroundings.
"I was just looking out my window," said Ella. "It's something I don't do very often."
All of the Spring Poetry Contest winners and honorable mentions will be invited to read their winning works at the Super Hoot organized by the Robert Frost Foundation on Saturday, May 12. Past winners and other amateur poets are also invited to read their work and that of others at the open mike.
