Nature center tabs young poets

The Janet Huckabee Arkansas River Valley Nature Center at Fort Smith is hosting a poetry contest.

A poem’s focus should be on conservation and the environment. Winners will be featured in the September-October issue of Arkansas Wildlife, published by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

Danielle Simmons, education program specialist at the nature center, thought of the contest.

“We normally are so busy working with school groups here at the center, but health issues have forced us to close to the public,” Simmons said. “That doesn’t mean we can’t continue to help teachers with interesting material for their students that helps spread the conservation message.”

Three grade brackets are available for entries: kindergarten-6th grade, 7th-9th grade and 10th-12th grade.

“We want to make sure the contest helps teachers and home-schoolers with some of their required concepts, so each poem will need to meet a few requirements,” Simmons said. “It must be six lines or sentences long, must include one component of alliteration (repetitive sounds in closely arranged words) and one component of onomatopoeia (words that spell out the sound they make). Of course, it also needs to include something about hunting, fishing, litter pickup, planting native gardens or another conservation-minded subject.”

Entries will be judged by Jeff Adams with the Fort Smith Commissary Kiwanis Club, Jenn Jennings with the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith and Sandy Berger, former president of the Arkansas Audubon Society.

The deadline for submission is June 1. Entries may be submitted through the following Google form: https:// forms.gle/b4mYor1wXCK DG6HA6

Contact Simmons at Danielle.Simmons@agfc. ar.gov for more information.