Rhode Island Poet Laureate, Tina Cane, and The Rhode Island Center for the Book have chosen Seoyon Kim, a junior at Wheeler School, as Rhode Island 2024 Youth Poetry Ambassador and Jacquelyn Song, senior at Wheeler School, as the 2024 Deputy Youth Poetry Ambassador. Sabine Cladis, Quinn Kennedy, Robin Linden, Karuna Lohman, and Mayte Segura, received Honorable Mentions
Seoyon says, “I am so grateful and excited to have been chosen as the RI Youth Poetry Ambassador! It was a former youth ambassador who first encouraged me to explore writing not as a solitary craft, but as something anchored in the context of a larger, interconnected world of loved ones who want to listen to and understand you—I hope to do the same for other youth in RI, helping identify those bridges of understanding spanning language, culture, and interpersonal relationships.”
The Deputy Youth Poetry Ambassador collaborates with the Ambassador and performs any duties in her stead, should she be unavailable. Jacquelyn says, “I’m incredibly grateful to be chosen as Deputy Youth Poetry Ambassador, and to be able to work with and learn from extremely talented individuals such as Ms. Cane and Seoyon. Poetry is such an abstract, evocative, and multifaceted form of self-expression, and I’m eager to share the unique lens it provides to our inner ruminations, interpersonal relationships, and interactions with the greater world.”
A launch and reading celebration will take place at the State House Library on March 1st at 5:30pm, with readings and remarks by our new ambassadors and finalists, and our outgoing ambassadors and other arts community advocates.
Seoyon will receive a $1,000 cash prize, an opportunity to record a reading for Cane’s distance reading series, Poetry is Bread, an opportunity to do school visits, workshops or public readings and the opportunity to have her poetry featured through the Poetry in Motion, RI on RIPTA busses state-wide.
Jacquelyn will receive a $500 cash prize, the opportunity to have her poetry featured through the Poetry in Motion, RI on RIPTA busses state-wide, and an opportunity to do school visits, workshops, or public readings.
