Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The Development Of Good Poets In New Mexico

By Ina Hunt


Poetry has always been seriously taken in New Mexico despite the absence of a poet laureate for all this time. A lot of effort has been invested in making poets in New Mexico. The most notable efforts are those by poetry loud; an association of schools, and the Poetry Society of New Mexico. The former organizes poem reciting competitions students. The other one is an organization that is charged with nurturing young talents in the field of poetry.

The poetry society of this region was formed by Alice Briley in the late 60s and has done a good job ever since. This institution is a strong supporter of cultural welfare. It strongly stands by this value. It engages in educational and literary activities, and nothing else out of this bracket. Due to its commitment to being no-partisan, it does not support any religious, political or social view points. Its members are, therefore, banned from participating in political, social and religious campaigns on behalf of the group.

This society has given birth to several poets. These poets include; Joe Shaffer, Jim Applegate, Ann Applegarth, Lynn Baldwin and Jeanette Oestermeyer, among several other established poets. This association has been operational since it was founded in the 60s. In recent days, there has been established a formidable coordination between this group and the Eastern University of this state. The collaboration has fostered the organization of student contests. These contests receive many participants and fans.

The group developed the RGV chapter which has for all this time encouraged upcoming poets. It formed a strong partnership with the New Mexican University. The students reaped the benefits through lectures and advice on poetry. The university began imparting this knowledge into students admitted in poetry classes. This friendship bred scholarships for needy students at the state poetry society.

Poetry loud is another group composed of mainly teachers whose core function is organizing recitation competition. They normally prizes at both national and state levels. The group does this in all the states in the country. The main prizes are 200 dollars for the winner and 200 dollars for the second-placed. They also cater for all the transportation costs for the main winner. They also offer some money for the refurbishing of school libraries for both the first-place and second-place winners. National competitions carry about ten times the amount of prize given at the state level.

Other earlier poets from this state included Dana Levin, D. H Lawrence; who had moved from Britain and Pat Mora. All these are poets whose works were widely appreciated by people of this state and many others in different parts of the world. They were among the earliest poets from this region.

These poets wrote about several issues as determined by happenings at the time. They addressed the troubles that came with industrialization, love, political revolutions and civilization among others as dictated by happenings at that time. They got a lot of recognition from all over the world.

Their writing styles also varied depending on the literary movements at every point in times. They used symbolism, realism, romanticism and naturalism in their works depending on the movement that was popular at the time. These different literary epochs came with their different styles.




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