Juneau Public Libraries hosted its first Pride youth poetry contest this year. Some of Juneau’s youngest poets showed up to celebrate with their words.
Fourteen-year-old Ocean Traver won second place. Traver said poetry is her way of communicating her truths when it’s hard to just talk about them openly.
“People who can’t, who don’t have a voice or can’t speak out, have a way of speaking out and telling their story,” she said.
The poem she read chronicled her experience of understanding her bisexuality, ending with a question she’s grappled with.
As I sit here today to tell my story, I must ask the question:
If we are all God’s children while he makes a lot of sinners?
Maria DeMaio, the contest’s organizer, said poetry is a vital way that LGBTQ+ individuals explore their identities.
“I think it’s just a different way to communicate who someone is and what an idea is,” she said. “It can really bring people together in a way that you know, writing an essay or something wouldn’t.”
DeMaio led the young poets in making “spine poems” — poems made from the words on stacks of book spines. The poets also made blackout poetry, using Sharpies to deconstruct old book pages, recipes and news stories.
Harper Field, age 9, read her blackout poem.
“Journey to America, journey to the Pacific / Far from inhabited land / The polar circle was past, the vessels directed towards America / On 31st March at 7 p.m. / We only thought of the future.”
Field took first place in the contest with a poem about Pride’s best-known symbol: rainbows.
Rainbows, twisting, curving swirling
a sky of colors bright as buttercups.
Green as grass.
Beautiful, a rainbow.
DeMaio said she hopes more young people will be inspired to express their pride and submit poems next June.
