Bryn Mawr Student Wins Poetry Contest

Bryn Mawr College junior Katherine Lewis recently won first place in the Lydia Pinkham Memorial Foundation’s Sylvia Plath poetry contest for her poem “October.”

Lewis, a philosophy major and English minor, was walking through the college’s English House at the end of last semester when she noticed a poster advertising a poetry competition. The contest—open to students at Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith, and Mount Holyoke Colleges—grabbed her attention.

“I knew how talented the writers are at all these schools, so I kind of entered the contest on a whim,” Lewis said.  “I figured there was nothing to lose by entering.”

Not only did Lewis not lose anything—she also won something: the $1,000 prize for the Lydia Pinkham Memorial Foundation’s Sylvia Plath poetry contest for her submission “October.”

Lewis wrote her poem while a student in Professor Thomas Devaney’s Poetry Workshop at Haverford College in the fall.

“The poem has changed a lot from when I first wrote it,” Lewis said. “Now it’s a modern day twist on a sonnet, but originally, it didn’t have any structure. The teacher told me to try to turn it into a sonnet. I tried a long, long time—even after class was over—to make it work.”

The hard work paid off, it seems. Even before all the contest submissions were in, the contest judge contacted Lewis to tell her he was really impressed with her work.

“It was really complimentary and flattering,” Lewis said. “I knew at that point even if I didn’t win, it was still a huge compliment.”

Now, she said, the poetry contest judge is trying to get her poem published.

For Lewis, a piece of advice that has helped—and what she would recommend to other aspiring poets—is just to keep at it.

“Keep writing and keep revising,” Lewis said. “I was struggling through my poetry class like everyone else.”

Lewis said her poem (reprinted below) was inspired by the fall season.

“The poem reflects the feeling I get walking around Bryn Mawr,” she said.

Lewis’s poem is reprinted below:

October

By Katherine Lewis

Scattered in my memories are images of autumn’s leaves
that shattered under foot and vanished with the breeze
on our walks home from school. In the vicissitudes of fall,
we meandered through the oaks and birches, counting all
the colors collaged amongst the branches. In sight of them,
I stumbled on an angry twig; I fumbled with my fraying hem,
flicking off the underbrush. My throbbing knees! They bled
and bruised, shades of plum contrasting hues of brown and red.
They dried and scabbed, and with the leaves the scabs fell, too
until the trees were bare and naked in the cold. And it is you —
it is you that I remember most from those crisp October nights.
The cold — it licked our cheeks, chapping them with windy bites.
But in flimsy foam cups of apple cider and the quiver of a lip,
I found solace in your Harvest kiss and in every cinnamon sip.