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April 29, 2008
Five young poets received awards on Sunday for their poems submitted to the Timothy Mumford Memorial Poetry Competition, which is administered by the Cornwall Public Library.
At the awards ceremony, awards were presented for the best poem in five age groups as well as a “best overall” poem. Library director Molly W. Robbins said that the competition received 145 poems written by 85 young local poets. A panel of five judges read through the submissions before making the awards.
This year’s winners are:
Ages 5-6 Kay Helen Shoshani “Mommy”
Ages 7-8-9 Allie Campney “Penguins”
Ages 10-11-12 Erin Milsom “The Way You Came”
Ages 13-14-15 Ryan Gagnon “Moonlight Days…”
Ages 16-17-18 Rulon Feeney “Dark Melodies”
Best Overall Marlee Lisker “Unsinkable”
The Timothy Mumford Memorial Poetry Competition was created by his parents, Warren and Mary Mumford, to honor their son, a young poet and musician, who died unexpectedly in 2006.
The judges in this year’s competition were:
Randall Enos – Youth Services Consultant, Ramapo Catskill Library System
John Kelly – Editor, “The Blotter” and a published poet
Patricia McGuirk-Larkin --Past president, Cornwall Library Board and a kindergarten
teacher at Horizon-on-Hudson Elementary Magnet School in Newburgh
Margaret Menge – Editor, The Cornwall Local
Patrick W. Robbins – Senior, Boston University and former Poetry Intern
at the “New Yorker Magazine”
Here is the Best Overall Poem, "Unsinkable," by Marlee Lisker, a thirteen-year-old from Cornwall who is in the eigth-grade at Oakwood Friends School:
Unsinkable
The dark night is blue-black, the color of bruised velvet,
The color of blood as it courses through veins.
The ship is pale, milky white,
Like the glassy orb that hands above it.
Like a corpse’s ghostly skin.
The twisted remains of the mangled ship,
The magnificent ship,
The unsinkable ship,
Trash in the water.
Or is it the souls who remain on board?
With one half sinking fast,
The other bobbing at the surface,
It is beautiful in a way that only the dead remember.
The most horrifying think they ever beheld,
The last thing they ever beheld.
How beautiful.
As it sinks, people stream off the boat,
Jumping from windows and decks,
Like awkward tears from darkened eyes.
The broken ship weeps.
They plunge into the fiery depths.
Of the otherwise icy ocean.
For the feel their flesh consumed by fire,
As they drop into the sea.
Their bodies tap an arrhythmic Morse code
As they hit the freezing water,
Spelling SOS.
The water is stained with blood.
They look all around as people fall,
But all they can see is pools of red,
Of blood that was shed,
And pools of blue,
Of blood that never will.
They try not to feel
The ice that consumes them,
But slowly the water becomes silent and still.
The boat has long since hit the bottom,
The unsinkable ship.
As each person freezes,
They become one with the iceberg,
They become one with their death.
Much too late,
The boats cut through the water like knives,
But all that remains
Are blocks of ice
That have taken human form.
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