Avonian Wins Poetry Competition, Two Others Named Finalists | Avon Old Farms News | About Us | Avon Old Farms

The Fresh Voices Poetry Competition is a program sponsored by the Hill-Stead Museum that offers students the opportunity to compose and perform original poems. The highly selective competition features a rigorous judging process, a focused workshop with professional poets, and special recognition. Since 1993, student poets from all corners of Connecticut have entered this competition. Each year, up to 15 finalists are selected from dozens of entries. 

This year, 12 finalists were chosen, with three of them being Avonians! As finalists, Henry Kice ’24, Joaquín Acuña Girault ’24, and Andrés Calderón Suárez ’27 performed a live reading of their respective poems before a panel of judges and audience at the Young Poets Competition & Celebration at Hill-Stead Museum on Friday, April 26.
 

Judges then selected five winners who received monetary awards and will have their poems published in the Hill-Stead’s online poetry journal, Theodate, named for Avon Old Farms School and Hill-Stead Museum Founder Theodate Pope Riddle.

Joaquín was awarded first place! Kice was also chosen as a winner, taking home an honorable mention award.

At Morning Meeting on Monday, April 22, the three Avonian finalists read their poems aloud for their teachers and peers. They each explained what inspired their work, and what they hoped to convey with their words.

Henry explained that his poem titled, “Fingernails,” spawned from an assignment in English 3 Honors with teacher Dan Hodgson in which students had to research an obscure historical figure and find something that connected them with that figure. “I was looking through a textbook and found a choir teacher who immigrated from Japan in the early 1900s, and I took pictures. In one of those pictures, I found my fingers holding down the right-hand corner of a page that I had forgotten to crop out. This poem connects my fingernails to his through their importance in music,” Henry explained.

For Joaquín, his winning submission was written as a sort of ode to his memories of Mexico City, where he was born and raised. He says it was a way to acknowledge that he still thinks of it often and carries a part of it with him always. “This poem is about a bluebird that I first saw here, in Avon, Connecticut,” Joaquin shared. “It would visit me outside my window throughout the winter, so it felt right to write a poem thanking it for the joy its song brought me on those cold winter mornings. But then something funny happened. I went back home for Spring Break—it is a beautiful time of the year back in Mexico. There's a very common type of tree called a jacaranda which blossoms right around that time, throughout March and April. One day, while walking around the city, atop one of these trees—a jacaranda—I saw a very similar bluebird. And I thought: what if it is the same bluebird? If I fly so often from Mexico to Connecticut, why not the bluebird too?”

Both Henry and Joaquín wrote their poems as part of a poetry-focused Advanced Independent Project (AIP) they have been working on this spring. Henry says it was a perfect way to spend their last few months in high school. “It was our last quarter at Avon, and we wanted to center our poetry around the school. It’s a fitting legacy to leave encapsulating our time at Avon.” Joaquín added that although he feels they have strong submissions, they did not really enter the competition to win. “It looks good on a resume, but we did it really because of a passion for poetry,” Joaquín says. “Although it’s a competition, everyone is in it to share a love of the art form.”

It's obvious that Andrés shares this love of poetry, and he clearly has a talent for it as well. He had two of his poems selected to be read aloud at the Hill-Stead event—an extremely impressive feat for a freshman from Mexico who learned English as a second language. One of his poems is a powerful and stark observation of a seemingly declining humanity throughout the world. The other is a more personal memorial to his great-grandfather, an important figure in his life.

“I wrote this poem to honor my great-grandfather Antono, an example of truthfulness and integrity and a man whose life reminds us that there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.”

Avon English teacher Kate Doemland has served as a judge in past editions of the Fresh Voices competition. Ahead of the final reading at the Hill-Stead she said this year’s submissions from Avonians stack up well against past winners. “The poems are just outstanding. The boys are serious poets, serious writers. They’re serious about the craft. It’s part of their identity here at Avon.”

She adds that thanks to Avon’s annual Poetry Recitation Competition, our students go into this competition with some experience. “They have the advantage of studying and reciting poetry. It lends itself to a strong understanding of the art form.”