Recent Catawba graduate Rachel Kennedy has won an award from the Poetry Council of North Carolina. Her sonnet "Flesh" was awarded second place in the Council's annual Charles Shull Contest for Traditional Poetry. The poem appears in the most recent issue of Bay Leaves, the Council's annual publication.
Judge Sidney Johnson Burris, Professor of English at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, wrote this about Rachel's poem: "Let me assume that the poet is looking at a photograph here, and so let me assume that it takes its place in a long line of poems about human atrocity. Yet what makes this poem memorable is its refusal to participate in sentimentality, in the mawkish sentiments that so often mar a poem of this sort. It takes a steady and strong eye to narrateEvents of this sort, particularly when working within traditional forms, and in this endeavor, the poem succeeds admirably."
Kennedy graduated in May with a degree in English. She is currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at Adelphi University on Long Island.
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