PHILIPSBURG:--- Since 2003 the Beyond Kultura Events Foundation (BKE) promotes storytelling, story writing and reading amongst the youth and adults. As part of its ‘Writing of Hurricane experiences project’, BKE called on all children and adults of Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten/Saint Martin and Anguilla to participate in its writing competition. The poem needed to be about their experiences with the passing of the Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
The results are as follows:
The first place winner is ‘Hurricane Poem’ by Laura Richardson(adult), with a total of 26 points.
A shared 2nd place with a total of 24 points goes to ‘ICE IS NICE’ by Laura Richardson, ‘SENSES OVERLOAD’ by Walter Hellebrand (adult), from Statia) and ‘DISTRACTION’ by Grace Cheasley, age 13, of the Caribbean International Academy (CIA).
Third place: ‘AFTER THE EYE’, with a total of 23 points, a Haiku by Chloe Ifrah, age 18, at the Caribbean International Academy (CIA).
A shared fourth place with a total of 22 points went to ‘A MOMENT OF DISMAY’ by Denny Mo, age 11 of the St. Joseph School, ‘HURRICANE’ by Paula Lovell, age 13 of the St. Joseph school and ‘RECALLING IRMA’ a Haiku by Nicholas Russo, age 11 of the Montessori School. Fifth place: ‘BECOMING TO BE’ by Loekie Morales, adult, with a total of 21 points.
In total 36 poems were submitted to Beyond Kutura Events Foundation within a deadline time frame.
The poems with the 5 highest grades were selected by an Experts Team, consisting of Poets, Authors and a Fervent reader-librarian. The judges from Sint Maarten and Holland have gotten the poems with an unrecognizable name-code, pseudonym of the writers. No author’s names were given to them. This is to avoid favoritism and to stimulate objectivity in selecting the poems BKE wants to publish.
The judges could grade each poem with a maximum of 10 points, based on criteria like The Form-The Style, The Rhyme-The Rhythm, Poetic Devices, Comprehension-Coherence, Mood-Imagery, Word Selection, Scope-Significance, Line Endings-Line Breaks, Punctuation-Spelling-Grammar and Content. Did the poem realize its intentions? The total scores for each candidate were summed up to an overall total score
Beyond Kultura has promised to publish the winning poems in a newspaper of Sint Maarten. Next to that, winners can be invited to accompany BKE’s president on radio programs to read their winning poems to the general public. Children can be put into the spotlight in their schools. BKE has furthermore, planned to publish a Hurricane story book in 2019, with possibly hurricane poems in it next of the overall story. If said book will be published, BKE can include the poems of the winners in such book about Hurricane Irma and Maria on Sint Maarten. Winning poems can also be published in a poem book. Publications in a book will be done only with the consent of the winners. For the youth under 18 years of age the consent of their parents would also be needed. In the case of publishing in a book, the winning writers will also receive 2 copies of the book.
Last Wednesday 20th of March, some of the winners could meet each other and read their winning poem for the invitees at Roland Richardson Gallery Museum in Marigot. One of the judges, Fabian Badejo was present and elaborated on the judging process. All winners were happy with their prizes and token of appreciation, handed over by Beyond Kultura Events Foundation.
Beyond Kultura congratulates the winners and will further lead them to the next steps in the winning procedures.
