Celebrating Rural Poetry:

The Grant

On November 19, 2005, at the annual convention of National Writing Project (NWP), a group from Prairie Lands Writing Project (PLWP) attended the annual Rural Sites Network breakfast, a subgroup of NWP which addresses the special needs of providing quality professional development in rural areas.  During this breakfast, Ted Kooser, poet laureate of the United States, announced that he had been working with the Rural Sites Network and the Rural School and Community Trust to host a national poetry contest celebrating and encouraging rural poetry at the high school level.  All sites within the Rural Sites Network were eligible to apply for the eight grants available.

Rebecca Dierking and Jane Frick brainstormed ideas and furiously wrote the grant proposal that RSN approved.  Notified of their acceptance at the beginning of February, the two immediately began organizing the support structure necessary for such an undertaking.  On March 2, 2006, PLWP’s Celebrating Rural Poetry contest was launched at High School Writing Day.  While the over 250 high school students were the first to learn of the contest, information was also disseminated via email and mailings to schools within PLWP’s geographic area.  The information was also posted on PLWP’s website. 

In early April, shortly after receiving the entries, a first culling was held.  A panel of teachers, preservice teachers, and professors read through the submissions and chose which would be forwarded to the professional poets serving as judges.  These local poets then ranked the poems they felt should be in the top ten.  After receiving the rankings and tallying the responses, Dierking contacted the winning high school poet, Timothy Weeks, a home schooled student from Savannah, Missouri. 

In early May, Weeks and his mother flew with Dierking to join the other sites’ representatives at a poetry reading in Washington D.C.  The weekend was a joy to all involved.   The poets toured the Senate chambers in the capitol, dined elegantly at Union Station, and met with congressional staff from their home states.  Weeks met with Senator Christopher Bond’s education liaison in Bond’s Senate office.   The culminating event of the Washington trip was the reading held in the Madison Building at the Library of Congress.  While Kooser was unable to attend due to a family crisis, Patricia Gray, the host of the Poetry at Noon series at the Library of Congress and a published poet herself, filled in gracefully.

During the summer of 2006, Dierking compiled and published the CD from which this missive is taken.  Also during that summer, Sun Rising Press published a chapbook with selected poems from the top contenders of the contest.  In addition, several poems from the contest were featured in River Front, a newsletter from Sun Rising. 

The highlight of the local contest was the poetry reading held August 23 at the St. Joseph Public Library.  The high school poets and the professional poets who judged the entries came together to read their poems created especially for this contest.  Audience members were treated to a variety of images about the northwest Missouri area:  root bridges, farming, and just the magnificence of common things, like trees in blossom, bees, and gravel roads.  If Kooser intended to celebrate and encourage rural poetry, then PLWP’s contest, CD, chapbook, and poetry reading definitely fit the bill.

Photos courtesy of Rebecca Dierking