April 14, 2006
Roxana Rivera poetry contest winners named
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Southern Illinois University Carbondale announced the winners of a campus-wide poetry contest that honors a creative writing student who died while pursuing her master of fine arts degree.
Ruth Ellen Kocher, a poet and professor from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, selected this year's honorees for the Roxana Rivera Memorial Poetry Contest. The theme for this year's contest was "Strong women, getting stronger." It was open to all SIUC students.
Campus leaders in 2004 renamed the annual Women's History Month Poetry Contest in honor of Rivera, who was a first-year creative writing MFA student from Lynwood, Calif., when she died in November 2003.
Graduate division winners, their hometown address and poem titles are:
• First place, Amy Blache, 8944 Pheasant Lake Drive, Tinley Park, "Insomnia Poem".
• Second place, Tracy Conerton, 1506 Plum Hill Road, Leaf River, "The Year Before She Got Pregnant"
• Third place, Ingrid Moody, 1302 Mead Terrace Road, Woodbridge, Va., "The Search".
• Honorable Mentions; Blache, "What My Grandmother Told Me About Men," and Kevin Kainulainen, 158 W. Superior St., Ishpeming, Minn., "Erosion's Constant Renewal".
Undergraduate division winners, their hometown addresses and poem titles are:
• First place, Krishna Pattisapu, 1915 Richview Road, Mount Vernon, "Thaggitsandi".
• Second place, Brian Hawkins, 1068 Wanda St., Granite City, "A Growth".
• Third place, Hope David, 512 Dogwood Lane, Carterville, "Marianna: A Modern Villanelle after Tennyson".
• Honorable Mentions: Jessica Bustos, 422 S. 17th St., Murphysboro, "Empty-bottled Confession," and Jonathan Travelstead, 309 W. Boulevard St., Marion, "Dixon Springs".
The winners received Barnes and Noble Booksellers gift certificates supplied by the Judge William Holmes Cook endowed professorship of Allison E. Joseph, associate professor of English and director of the creative writing MFA program at SIUC. First place winners received $70 gift certificates, second place received $50 and third place received $30 certificates.
Leading in research, scholarly and creative activities is among the goals of Southern at 150: Building Excellence Through Commitment, the blueprint the University is following as it approaches its 150th anniversary in 2019.