By Sean Frederick Forbes, Ph.D.
Director, Creative Writing Program
UConn English Department

When I learned that the theme of this year’s ECE summer magazine was going to be “Growth Mindset: Challenging the Status Quo,” I nodded in approval. For any writer, especially a poet, it’s important to consider the role that a healthy “growth mindset” plays in the writing process. Every time one writes a poem, an essay, a text message, or even a grocery list, one is learning to write all over again. Writing a villanelle requires an understanding of the way repeated alternating refrains and a specific end rhyme scheme are employed to convey a complex narrative to the reader/listener versus texting one’s sibling to ask for a huge favor which requires one to think about effective and persuasive phrasing. The writer adapts to the nuances and limitations of each writing form, and in turn, the writer is growing by questioning and challenging the norms set before them. It’s the poet’s exuberant curiosity coupled with the impulse to take risks that allows for creative thought and expression.

My fellow judges, Sophie Buckner and Dan Healy, (both PhD candidates in the English department and creative writers), and I selected three poetry packets by Grace Dehnel, McKena Clemons, and Natalie Crowley, as the first, second, and third prize winners, respectively. With almost 100 submis­sions for this contest, and no identify­ing information on each packet during the review process, our three winners all happened to be students from Rockville High School. This was very exciting to find out as Mrs. Nordlund, their Rockville High School instructor, was once a Summer Institute fellow for the Connecticut Writing Project housed in the English department at UConn and she’s also a poet herself.

During the reading and deliberation process, Sophie, Dan and I thought carefully and critically about the pre­sentation of the poems in each packet. We considered the ways in which the speaker’s voice establishes tone, and the form and style employed, as well as many other factors. What was most telling to the three of us was that

these three poets were moved by their rum­bustious desires to express themselves in poetic form, and for that we are eternally grateful.
 
In Grace Dehnel’s poem “Air,” the speaker presents the denotative mean­ing of the word “free fall,” and takes on the typography that one would expect to find in an online or print dictionary such as a phonetic pronunciation guide, the part of speech of the word (“free fall” is a verb), and the word’s meaning. Typographically, the poem’s layout is a free fall-esque form that can unsettle the reader ever so slightly. This innovative decision allows the speaker to present a narrative voice to the reader in a most provocative man­ner with lines such as “A gravitational pull--/ intangible & untouchable & yet/doesn’t let you leave does it?” What’s most striking in these lines are the ways in which spacing, notably the large gaps within a line, create a tension within the narrative presented since the speaker breaks free from the constraints of traditional poetic line and stanza breaks expectations.
 
McKena Clemons’ poem “The second month” astonishes the reader with its use of a spare aesthetics juxta­posed with deep-rooted cultural and historical stings about the month of February. In the first few lines, the reader is symbolically exposed to the natural elements associated with a wintery climate—the chilled air, the dead trees, and the muddy slush of too much snow and sometimes rain. Clemons then ends the poem with three thought-provoking lines for the reader to ponder over: The streets are flooded with red hearts but they didn’t leave blood stains. / The shortest month dedicated to love and black bodies. / February is hypocrisy.” These lines can lead the reader to be con­templative and inquisitive about how some months in a calendar year can induce such deep thinking.
 
Natalie Crowley’s poem “Maybe it’s the Maybelline” the speaker confronts feminine beauty standards based on the cosmetics industry and the emotional, physical, and psychological affects and effects of applying mascara to one’s eyelashes. In the first few lines, the speaker informs the reader that in 1872 the first commercial mascara was created: a mixture of “petroleum jelly and coal dust.” In doing so, the reader becomes fixated on the human eye and the drastic and harmful “lengths” one takes in wanting to have allur­ing-looking eyelashes: “Sneaking into my sister’s makeup. / I used her mas­cara. / Got a cyst on my eye.” As one continues to read Crowley’s poem, one engages with the speaker on multiple levels in a succinct yet profoundly substantive style of voice.
 
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