Catherine Sargeant and Nicolas Wolf are the winners of NCC’s Martin Luther King, Jr. prose and poetry contest for 2008. They will read their work at Voting the Dream, the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration on January 26, 6:00 p.m. at Lipkin Theatre, Kopecek Hall.
Sargeant is a resident of Kunkletown who graduated from the Achievement House Charter School, a cyberschool. Her poem, “Awaken Me,” was inspired by her father’s re-enlistment in the Army shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The poem laments hatred and the widespread pain it causes throughout the world and expresses hope for enmity’s end.
“I hope that when people hear my poem,” she says, “they will see that what they say and do affects other people and that they will change.”
Sargeant is a sophomore at Northampton Community College, where she is majoring in general studies with the goal of entering the nursing program.
Wolf, a Bangor resident, is in his first year at Northampton Community College, where he is majoring in general studies and considering an academic career. He began writing poetry only 5 months ago, in a writing class at NCC.
His winning poem “Repentance” aims to re-create a sense of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. “I imagined what it must have felt like to strive for something that must have seemed unattainable at the time, a feeling I think of as ‘hopeless desire.’ ”
Although he was born decades after the civil rights movement, Wolf has a connection to it through his mother, who marched in Mississippi.
Criteria for judging entries were appropriateness to the theme “Voting the Dream,” skill of presentation and creative and critical thinking.
The award-winning works appear below:
“Awaken Me” by Catherine Sargeant
I seldom open my eyes
in fear of what I’d see:
War. Discrimination. Violence.
Murder. Poverty and starvation.
I’d rather live in darkness
than see the light of day
to see destruction and chaos
is a heavy price to pay.
The burden of a lost child;
a victim of deceit,
the Devil in the minds of many
whom only God can defeat.
I seldom open my eyes
in fear of what I’d see.
When hurt and pain are no more,
then awaken me.
“Repentance” by Nicolas Wolf
My home is indebted to our ancestors
So now I pay for it.
You wish me to bleed my land back
I do so gladly.
Beyond my world lies mystery
Keep me bundled up.
The exterior scares me
Grey-haired appendages of our beloved
We are all dinosaurs before Men
Break down my barrier and bring me back
To the one truth:
The god; the church; the nation
The ballot.
Clouds gather to chorus the voice
Bleed your land for Him.
Kill your son for Him.
Vote for Him.
Clouds haven’t been known to take responsibility.
Only one could be heard
Flirting with the gun, he steps forward
Pleading and blackened from the smoke of hatred
We knew him too well.
