BRATTLEBORO — The Landmark Trust USA recently announced the winners in the first annual Rudyard Kipling Award for Young Writers.
The award was created to help celebrate The Landmark Trust USA's 25th anniversary as an inspiration for young writers in the Kipling tradition, according to Tristam Johnson, interim executive director of Landmark Trust USA, in a news release.
A crowd of over 70 gathered at the Latchis Theatre on June 3, eagerly awaiting the results. Johnson congratulated the students, telling them they deserved an enormous round of applause. In a little more than four weeks, the award elicited 90 responses including 14 poems, 67 prose pieces, and eight nonfiction pieces.
The schools participating included Academy and Green Street schools in Brattleboro, Dover Elementary, Dummerston Elementary, Guilford Central School, The Grammar School in Putney, and Jamaica Village School.
One of the five judges, Tim Weed, who teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and in the MFA Creative and Professional Writing program at Western Connecticut State University, offered several quotes from Rudyard Kipling including “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
He encouraged the students to keep writing and to read voraciously. He reminded them that writing is hard work, but it's worth the effort.
Dede Cummings, another judge, who is a writer, book designer, and publisher, a public radio commentator for Vermont Public Radio, and frequently lectures and teaches at writers' conferences, also encouraged the students to keep writing:
“Learning how to write and being a good writer - you can use it for anything you do, whether you're a doctor or lawyer or police chief or a soldier. Writing is a wonderful thing.”
She also talked about poetry as a way to help kids slow down in the digital age.
“For children to learn about poetry - to read poetry and to write it themselves - is so valuable. It's one thing to go on Twitter and type in 150 characters, but teaching kids about the tradition of Haiku and their observations of nature and poetry in general is another thing altogether. Poetry is a way for kids to slow down the pace of their lives and really focus on something that is inspiring.”
The Rudyard Kipling Young Writers Award was awarded to 11 students. All of the winning entries received a copy of “The Jungle Book” courtesy of SO Vermont Arts & Living magazine signed by each of the judges. The Top Overall winner received a one-night stay at Naulakha with seven friends. The top winners in prose and poetry received a one-night stay at the Kipling Carriage House and a tour of Naulakha.
The overall winner was Elsie Fleming, a sixth-grader at Academy School, for “The Room was Lit Up.”
The prose winner was Imani Namutebi, a fourth-grader at Oak Grove School, for “Why the Guinea Pig has No Tail.”
Honorable mentions in the prose category went to Katie Mae Tustin, a fifth-grader at Guilford Central School, for “How Vermont Got its Green Mountains”; Carly Gallivan, 12, of Dover School, for “How Rudyard Kipling Got His Imagination”; Damian Markovic, 12, of Dover School for “Stories of Naulakha”; Kaliyah Tomolonis, a fourth-grader at Academy School, for “How the Cat Got its Whiskers”; and Sadie Mills, a fourth-grader at Dummerston Elementary School, for “How the Beaver Got Her Long Teeth.”
The top poetry prize was won by Alessia Tallini, a sixth-grader at Dover School, for “The First Pair of Skis.”
Honorable mentions went to Genevieve Redmond, a fourth-grader at Guilford Central School, for “Flower to Flower”; Isabelle Greenewalt, a fourth-grader at The Grammar School, for “Questions to a River”; and Anna Sophie Cummings, a fifth-grader at Academy School, for “Drip Plip Plop.”
The competition was open to all elementary school children in Windham County in grades 4-6, whether in public or private schools or home-schooled.
Besides Cummings, the panel of judges included Karen Hesse, an award-winning young adult author who is best known for “Out of the Dust” (1997) and “The Music of Dolphins” (1996), and Verandah Porche, who works as a poet-in-residence, performer, and writing partner. Based in rural Vermont since 1968, she has published Sudden Eden (Verdant Books).