Peoria's Whittier Primary School is sowing the seeds for many young award-winning poets.
The school had one student win and one receive an honorable mention in the statewide Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards, an annual competition for K-12 students. This year's awards had 988 submissions, the most ever.
Antonio Galindo, 8, was one of two second-grade winners. His poem was titled, “Ode to a Library,” and he said the idea came to him almost immediately.
“When I heard about this poem thing, I thought automatically: poem, books,” he said.
Antonio is not the only poet at the school. Clara Locke, also 8, received an honorable mention in the same category for her poem, “Day at the Beach.”
“The reason I wrote my poem was because my grandma, who had surgery on her lungs and liver, loved the beach, so I wrote about the beach to remind me of her,” she said.
Harper Causley also drew inspiration from family. She received an honorable mention from the competition in 2022.
“I wrote my poem because I really like my sister, and she's the only sister I have,” said 8-year-old Harper.
Common themes for this year's poems include places with special significance to the poets, interpersonal relationships and nature, according to Illinois Humanities.
Sherlin Dominguez was a previous competition winner. She used the sky as inspiration for her poem, "The Stars and the Sun and the Moon."
“I wrote my poem because I heard that the stars in the morning, not all of them are gone, but the sun is one of the stars,” she said.
Charlotte Tyler's poem was titled "Sunset of the Flowers." She also is a past winner of the competition.
“The hardest part was definitely coming up with the idea and seeing if things rhymed or went well together,” said Charlotte, 9.
The young poets said the writing process was educational. For Sherlin, she learned it's not all about winning.
“If you win, you could be happy,” she said. “If you lose, you could be happy too, because at least you brought in poetry.”
Charlotte said she learned to find beauty in the endings.
“My favorite part of writing the poem was the ending,” she said. “The endings are always such beautiful parts of the poem.”
The students credited their families, friends and teachers for helping them with their poems. Charlotte said they also got help from Whittier library manager Jennifer Brady.
“I had a lot of help from our librarian, Miss Brady,” she said. “The poem that won, she helped me correct a lot of things and helped me write the ending.”
Brady is happy the competition is inspiring students to write more.
“I am so excited about kids who just write because they can, and that they're inspiring each other,” she said. “And I think that is so, so cool.”
Whittier might have some future authors as alumni.
“I've always wanted to be a gymnast, but I want to have two jobs, be an author and a gymnast,” said Harper.
Clara also has added author to her future career plans.
“I want to be an artist, except I want to see if I can try and write a guidebook about shading,” she said.
As one of this year's winners, Antonio will travel to Chicago to read his poem at the awards ceremony.
He also won $100 that he plans to spend on video games and decorations for his hamster, Hamsty.
As for their next poems, the students already have some ideas in mind.
“I would like to write it about being, not being perfect, but being imperfect just the way you are,” Harper said.
Charlotte's next poem will be about books, Antonio's is about the video game, The Legend of Zelda, while Clara’s is about fairy tale land and Sherlin's is about superheroes.
As part of the awards, Illinois Humanities also creates video lessons, writing prompts and lesson guides to help teach the state's young poets. Those resources are available on the organization's website.
