SSCS secondary English teacher Jennifer Field, organizer of the SSCS Poetry Festival, welcomes four “major stars” of the literary world to SSCS.
SSCS opened its doors on Oct. 18 to four accomplished poets for its annual daylong school Poetry Festival. The festival kicked off with a morning assembly where high school students had an opportunity to mingle with these world famous visiting poets in the auditorium.
Supported by the Sharon Springs Klinkhart Hall Art Center, festival founder and Pulitzer Prize winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon brought with him fellow poets Sophie Cabot Black, Dr. Maya C. Popa and Peter Balakian. These poets read some of their published work, talked about how they developed a love for poetry and fielded a few questions from the students.
“Perhaps one of you will become hooked on the music of words like we have,” Peter Balakian told the students. Balakian is a Pulitzer Prize winning poetry writer himself, an author of eight books and a faculty member at nearby Colgate University. He went on to read an excerpt of his “feelings” he wrote dated April 2020 when he escaped from quarantine of the COVID pandemic to ride an Amtrak train from upstate New York to his apartment near Manhattan.
Sophie Cabot Black, another prize-winning poet (author of three collections) and teacher at Columbia University related to the students with her prose about growing up on a New England farm and her life experiencing farm animals and agriculture.
Maya Popa, also a prize-winning poet, poetry editor and teacher at New York University, talked to students about relationships and break-ups and related her writings to fish as in “there are other fish in the sea,” she said.
During the afternoon, SSCS students interested in this medium had an opportunity to have their work critiqued by the visiting poets (see below). Students from Cooperstown, Canajoharie, and OESJ also visited SSCS to join in on the poetry festival.
Secondary English teacher Jennifer Field organized the SSCS festival and welcomed these “major stars” of the literary world to SSCS.
Face-to-face workshop with a poet
As part of the Poetry Festival, a group of SSCS students had an opportunity to attend a face-to-face workshop with visiting poet/author Dr. Maya Popa.
These students in the Creative Writing class had been working for weeks to get their poems written, edited and ready to present to the visiting poets. During a two-hour afternoon session they took turns sharing, reading and critiquing each other’s poems while getting writing tips from Dr. Popa.
Student participants included Isabella Cornwell, Ahzeilia Hartlieb, Sophia Insogna, Madison Lynk, Kaitlyn Roosevelt, Taylar Sniffen and Lilyana Perrotti.
View more photos and video clips from the Poetry Festival on the SSCS Facebook page.
