Students will have the opportunity to share their voice through poetry in the third annual poetry contest held by the Citrus College English Society.
The contest is open to any student no matter their major, and will be held at 4 p.m. on May 10 in the campus center mall.
Prizes will be given to the top three contestants. First place will get $100, second place $50 and third place receives a gift basket.
The topic is self-portrait, and the only guideline is the poem must be 25 lines or fewer and in 12 point font.
The English Society held a poetry workshop led by Kevin Riel, who is the Assistant Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Claremont Graduate University and is Editor-in-chief at Foothill Journal, on April 12 in the library.
“This is a great opportunity to be creative and to think about who you are,” Riel said.
The workshop gave ideas on how to form and structure their poems. There is no specific structure for this contest and gives the student full freedom on the topic.
Some key ideas that came out of the workshop were that the writer does not have to write in the first-person. Also, contestants can write about how others see them, go vulnerable and say something memorable.
“It is important for you to surprise your audience and say something that is going to stick in their memory,” Riel said.
The contestants’ poems will be judged by the English faculty, and it will be a blind judging.
English professor and English Society advisor, Lisa Telesca, said “We each read them separately, then get together and rank them and then we get the top 10.”
The top 10 will be notified after the judging. However, every student is encouraged to read their poems.
“For most, this is their first time reading out loud and it is really exciting,” Telesca said.
Although, if students are too shy to read aloud, they can still have their poems read by members of the English Society.
“Last year 55 poems were submitted last year, and the year before 35,” Telesca said. “We hope to add more this year given the contest is becoming more traditional.”
Poems must be submitted to Cathy Day at Cday@citruscollege.edu before noon on April 25.
