2018 – POETRY INDEED!
On October 26, 2018 the NJ Center for the Book hosted the event, POETRY INDEED, at the Livingston Campus Student Center of Rutgers University in Piscataway. More than 150 students, teachers, families, and friends attended. Forty poems submitted were read by the student authors. Several poems were illustrated by the author or another student colleague. Awards were given to students at several grade levels.
The POETRY INDEED! event showcased the work of NJ students in finding their voice through the use of poetry, and provided a forum to have the students’ work read and respected.
In addition to the presentations by student authors, the Center previewed the second e-book in their series of the NJ Trackers, entitled The New Jersey Trackers in The Greatest Mystery in All of History. The first chapter will be released in early December. Several NJ authors displayed their recent books, and the winner of the Center’s Miss Rumphius award in 2018, Jocelyn Jimenes of the Princeton Public Library, discussed her award winning teen literacy program, “I Read This Book.”
Anoushka Aswin, a sophomore at West-Windsor-Plainsboro Regional High School, won the overall prize for poetry. Below is her award winning poem:
don’t shoot, America
dead bodies
can’t hear your
thoughts and prayers.
can’t graduate,
can’t get married,
can’t grow old. my school
is not
a battlefield,
my desk
is not
a barricade,
my classmate
is not
a human shield. when
school shootings
become weekly traditions,
bullets destroy
life,
liberty,
and happiness.
yet change
s t r o l l s
l e i s u r e l y,
as again and again
another school
loses its spirit
to an ar-15.
survivors
petition
for their lives,
and in return
they are gifted
with empty promises,
and parents
are left
with empty bedrooms,
while bodies
while bodies
are lowered
into empty graves.
dead bodies
can’t use their voice,
but we can.