Students write inaugural poems for poetry academy contest

NEW York—hallie Knight, a high-school senior from Jacksonville, Florida, has some well-formed ideas about where the country is and how she’d like to see it change.

The 17-year-old has won a contest organized by the Academy of American Poets for which students under 18 wrote their own inaugural poems in anticipation of Wednesday’s swearing in of President-elect Joe Biden. Applicants for the Inaugural Poem Project were urged to submit work that reflects “on the country’s challenges, strengths, and hope for its future,” according to the guidelines.

Knight says she “wanted to acknowledge the greatness of the potential for our country at this present moment, and the opportunity we have as citizens to choose what it becomes out of all this chaos.”

Inspired by works ranging from W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening” to Adrienne Rich’s “Storm Warnings,” Knight crafted a piece called “To Rebuild” that likens the US to a house that has been severely but not hopelessly damaged.

Knight will receive $1,000, and her work—along with the poems of two runners-up—will be featured on and in magazine.

The official inaugural poem was read during Wednesday’s ceremony

STUDENT-POETS Hallie Knight (from left), 17, a high-school senior from Jacksonville, Fla., Mina King, a 17-year-old from Shreveport, La., and 12-year-old Gabrielle Marshall, from Richmond, Va. by Amanda Gorman, the country’s first Youth Poet Laureate. She is 22, just a few years older than Knight.

“She is proof to people of all ages, but especially those younger than her, that there is no need to wait to make an impact,” Knight says.

Mina King, a 17-year-old from Shreveport, Louisiana, came in second for “In Pursuit of Dawn,” in which she wove in the common

American theme of rising from poverty. only by the American

The third-place finisher is just 12 years old: Gabrielle Marshall, from Richmond, Virginia. Her “The Power of Hope” acknowledged the country’s profound divisions, and possibilities: Today’s hope is peering beyond the lingering barrier, but still recognizing the diversity in ourselves.