Questions by Noah Rich

Why do we violently lash out at each other in hate like a snake in danger?
Why do we have to be so isolated while not agreeing on a middle ground?
Why do we attack, physically or verbally, people who are different than us?
Why must we always have our way, while not seeing that people suffer for
our nearsightedness, struggling to feed themselves and families?
Why do we not respect people who are the opposite gender or other status?
Why do we not respect nature and just throw things to the side without
second thought?
Why must we leech the earth of its resources, not thinking about our
future? Why do we snap at the smallest things?
Why do we do things that help us but hinder others?
Why can we not live in symmetry, like a leaf branching out from its stem?
Why can we not just live as one race, one human species, one planet?

These things should come naturally to us, as one human race, not separated by anything.

The question we should be asking is
How can we change?

Students at Maine’s Berwick Academy are no strangers to poetry.  With an annual poet-in-residence program Berwick affords students the rich opportunity to steep in poetry every April for a full week, in addition to poetry encounters within their English classes throughout the year. Some students take especially to the craft in deeply moving, often profound, beautiful, and sometimes surprising ways.  Four such poets are featured here:

Bella Gorman (entering grade 9), Belle Greenshields (entering grade 8), Noah Rich (entering grade 8), and Cole Roenick (entering Grade 8).

These students learned from this year’s poet-in-residence, Marjorie Thomsen, and created something truly valuable and fresh, inspired by poets they read, such as Carl Sandburg.  They graciously agreed to share their poems in our middle school poetry collection, and two of the poets also read their poems aloud in our evening community poetry event.  These poets are brave, inspired, and inspiring.