(Photo caption: West Haven’s Poet Laureate Tony Fusco with Sofie Burns (left) and Gabriella Sapeinza (right) at the Land Trust of West Haven’s Poetry Post on the Savin Rock Boardwalk.)
Article by Marilyn Wilkes, Land Trust of West Haven Vice President
Poems written by Gabriella Sapeinza, “Moon” (3rd grade, Pagels School), Sofie Burns, “Change of a Caterpillar” (4th grade, Pagels School), and Gianna Aniballi, “The Pouring Rain” (8th grade, Bailey Middle School) were chosen from more than 400 entries for the top prize in the Land Trust of West Haven’s and Board of Education’s 2024 Poetry Contest. The students read their poems at an award ceremony on Friday, April 26, at the Land Trust’s Poetry Post on the Savin Rock Boardwalk.
April is National Poetry Month and Earth Day is on April 22. To celebrate both events, the Land Trust sponsored the nature-themed poetry contest in collaboration with the Board of Education.
According to Colette Bennett, the Board of Education’s language arts coordinator and event co-coordinator, students have been learning about poetry in their classrooms for several weeks. In grades 3 and 4 in each elementary school, students studied the haiku and the tanka, both Japanese poetic forms.
In grade 8 at Bailey Middle School, students studied famous poems on nature. To appreciate how the theme of nature is developed, they identified patterns of language, structure, and punctuation.
A three-judge panel determined the winning poems: Tony Fusco, who was named Poet Laureate for the City of West Haven in April of 2019, Past President of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and co-chair of the Connecticut Poetry Society Haiku Chapter; Renny Loisel, President of the West Haven Land Trust; and Colette Bennett. Each winner received a $50 gift card; a native plant, courtesy of the Land Trust’s Native Plant Initiative; and a packet of milkweed seeds.
The Land Trust of West Haven, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed to promote the protection and preservation of natural resources and open space properties of public significance in West Haven, CT, including coastal resources, with particular emphasis on the shoreline of the Long Island Sound in the general area of Savin Rock.
