We were thrilled to learn of Gigantic Sequins‘ unique “Teen Sequins” call for submissions, and couldn’t help but encourage our high school summer mentorship students to share their stuff! As we’d hoped, they brought their A-game.
Congratulations to Kathryn (“Katy”) Hargett of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, ’17 and Jordan Cutler-Tietjen of La Cañada High School, ’16, named 2015 Teen Sequins for the Age 16 & 17 categories, respectively. Katy studied poetry with Managing Editor Lucia LoTempio this summer, while Jordan studied journalism with Blog Editor Amanda Silberling.
Katy‘s Teen Sequins poem is entitled “Moro Reflex.” Judge Sophie Klahr said of the work, “As Gregory Orr suggests in ‘Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry’ the quality of the greatest poetry is an interdependence on music and imagination, story and structure. Kathryn Hargett’s poem ‘Moro Reflex’ swims with these fused temperaments…”
Jordan‘s Teen Sequins poem is entitled “Bedside.” Says Sophie Klahr, “If we are to believe, as T.S. Eliot (nodding to Coleridge) suggested, in the idea that ‘making the familiar strange and the strange familiar’ is a quality of good poetry, what we have in ‘Bedside’ is a very good poem … There is a startling sweetness to Cutler-Tietjen’s poem, and by the end, we see that the title of the poem does in fact contain the truth of it. This is a love poem, a poem of the body, attentive and shot through with longing. Strange familiar, familiar strange.”
Congratulations is also in order for the mentorship students named Honorable Mentions:
Andrea Giugni, 17, North Broward Preparatory School (FL)
Meghana Mysore, 17, Lake Oswego High School (OR)
Lucy Wainger, 17, Stuyvesant High School (NY)
Audrey Zhao, 17, Marin Academy (CA)
Additional congratulations to Issue Twelve contributor & 2015 Adroit Prize for Poetry Editors List student Annalise Lozier of Interlochen Arts Academy, ’17, named an Honorable Mention in the Age 16 category.
Thank you, Gigantic Sequins, for supporting teen poets!
