All summer, we asked for high school students to send us their poetry inspired by the season for the Battle of the High School Bards. Our challenge was co-presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers’ Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. And the response was tremendous, with over 600 entries — a record for our Extra Credit challenges. The National Student Poets evaluated every poem and delivered a shortlist to our judge, the poet and Columbia University professor Dorothea Lasky, who picked the winner.

WINNER:

Timi Okedina — Des Plaines, IL

Timi Okedina’s “Our Urban Educational Systems,” diverged from the majority of the entries in that it avoided typical summertime tropes and images. Lasky says that was fine by her. Instead, Okedina’s poem deals with the way poverty and a lack of imagination keep kids from achieving their ambitions, set over a sample from a classic poet of urban disillusionment, Gil Scott Heron:

The kids just want a way to envision their dreams.
What’s the difference between a vision and dreams?
The children have hope in mind but reality is blocking their vision to see
That it’s impossible to empower the teens
When they don’t have a dream to believe.

“I felt that Timi had a great sense of sound, which is what a poet needs more than anything else,” Lasky explains. “It reminded me of a young Gertrude Stein.”  

Special thanks to the National Student Poets: Sojourner Ahebee, Luisa Banchoff, Miles Hewitt, Claire Lee, and Lylla Younes.