Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: poetry contest

  • 2019 Winning Poems

    2019 Winning Poems

    These are the winning poems of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2019 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. For more information on the peace poetry contest, and to read the winning poems from previous years, click here.

    Adult Category, First Place
    Devreaux Baker

    Counting Moons

    I am counting moons until the memory of the bombing
    of your sister’s village folds up its tents and finds
    a home in someone else’s heart. Ten moons after
    and I am still dreaming of winter in the mouth of spring,

    still feeling the hooves of loss stampeding
    the bones inside my body, wondering where
    the dead journey when they walk out
    of the houses of the living.

    This is the way we learn how to make sense
    in a senseless world, count moons that cross the sky
    and roll bone dice in the backwater alleys of our souls
    until all our questions of right and wrong learn lessons

    from the shape-shifter and fly out of our doors as birds;
    crows or ravens. I wander the hallways like a lost ghost
    and ask why did she want a wedding in a world made of war?

    Why did she want a dress stitched with the dreams
    of our people? Why did she believe in the possibility
    of love in a time of hate? I wake to the smell
    of cumin and turmeric, marjoram and coriander.

    I find you in the kitchen releasing the aroma of spices
    for a good life into the mouth of a world famished for peace,
    causing me to feel as hungry as all migrant tongues
    anxious to be fed words of hope we can eat as bread

    or drink as coffee. I wake with the call to prayer
    that signals forgiveness and a new beginning
    for all of us. I whisper names of the dead and cradle them
    in my hands. This is the way things fall apart and
    this is the way they are mended once again.

     

    Adult Category, Honorable Mention
    Colin D. Halloran

    ABU OMAR1
    Aleppo, Syria
    March 2017

    He gives us hope, or recollection of what it was.
    What it was to live, what it is to be present.

    He sits in slippered feet, smoking pipe perched thoughtfully
    as he exudes an academic air, his chin is slightly tilted,
    eyes turned not toward chunks of rubble on the floor
    or the bed stand, now more tilted than his chin.

    He does not seem to notice the places where the roof caved in,
    the shutters barely dangling, the windows long-since shattered.

    His Aleppo is not the background smoldering buildings,
    bloodied streets and smoke filled skies.

    No, he packs his city contentedly into his pipe
    and slowly cranks his gramophone.

    He is the wizard of Aleppo, white beard and all,
    creating the magic of memory, the faintest smoke rings of hope,
    belief that things could be as they once were.

    “It’s my home,” he says, as though it’s obvious why he hasn’t left
    this war torn structure
    this city of rubble
    this place that records his loss.

    Because for Abu Omar this place is home
    this place is hope
    that one day his grandchildren
    will once more fill the shattered space with joy.

    But for now, he first fills his pipe
    then fills the wall-less room with strained notes that move from vinyl
    into the streets, like so many revolutionaries did before.

    Because this is his city.
    This is his home.
    And this is his hope.

    ____________________

    1 In March of 2017 a photograph by Andrew Katz went viral. The photo featured Mohammed Mohiedin Anis, known as Abu Omar, sitting on the bed in his destroyed Aleppo apartment, smoking a pipe and listening to his favorite record.

     

    Youth Category (13-18), First Place
    Cindy Xin

    Golden Gates

    i.
    Dried blue tongue. Winter bite. Your mother is twelve when she
    learns violence is more than a pistol pressed to her father’s forehead:
    It’s her mother silent, crouching over one small sac. It’s a creaky
    deck that screams against footsteps as they board the ship, eyes
    forward while her father’s corpse is left sinking in motherland soil.

    Steam engine burr. Impossible shore. Each day sunken with a
    new grief—children who hear bullets whenever night falls.
    Mothers reaching for shadows, each crowned with a deadman’s
    name. Al silence if not for the bombs, re-swallowed as secrets
    in the ocean’s many mouths.

    ii.
    Months later, San Francisco slides in with teeth. Every night,
    Your mother can still hear her father’s voice, sharp till drowned
    out with blood. Still, life goes on. Quick cuts on the roasted
    pork belly. Dishes clanking in the sink. Her mother dying
    and the sounds of it: water leaks and strapping silence.

    Sometimes, she remembers again. Her father picking tulips
    in the valley. The sun’s glare not a battle cry, but a beginning.
    She presses her forehead where the soldier pressed her father’s.
    Oceans and decades away, she can still hear his cries.

    Still, life goes on.

    iii.
    A duck’s brief song outside the window. Sunlight slanting
    from a hole in the ceiling. Everything hospital white.
    Your face meeting hers for the first time. Your mother
    grazes your forehead, names you forgiveness.
    Outside the tulips are blooming
    even an ocean away.

     

    Youth Category (13-18), Honorable Mention
    Isabella Cho

    Post-War Topography

    these are the mountains, i’m told,
    where boys with guns weaved through trees

    and prayed for rain. where camphor caught red
    silt between roots and the spirits of tigers stirred

    in faceless boughs, silver bombers gliding
    through canopy. at night, the mountains grow

    like stains, lean into the automobiles strewn
    over asphalt. in the sky, a commercial plane,

    red wound on a pockmarked face. gravel rasps under
    my rubber soles. i paw at it; an animal, maw wet

    with what’s to come. there’s no truck hulking bovine
    in the dark, no moonlit wheel to throw

    my gaze at. instead, my hands, oiled from heat,
    rushing down for dust: an arc of rubble thrown

    into sky. it suspends, luminous, then clatters
    to stillness. eight years ago i would’ve believed

    that the mist pouring from the mountain’s jaw
    was my grandmother. now, just pearl air killing

    the blue rhythm of stars. crickets weep
    and add a skin to silence. above mountains

    light cycles through its blistering histories—

    i too, a fist of dust in transit.

     

    Youth Category (12 and Under), First Place
    Alex Fiszer

    Peaceful Melodies

    He stood up for peace
    When he refused to plan
    He sat down for peace
    Even when money was thrown at him
    “Just play!”

    He stood up for peace
    No matter who it was
    He sat down for peace
    And played his
    “Song of the birds”

    Dear Pablo Casals
    Thank you for your peaceful
    Melodies

     

    Youth Category (12 and Under), Honorable Mention
    Memphis Coots

    War Poem

    War of gods.
    War of princesses.
    War of nature.
    War of wars.
    There will never
    Ever Ever
    Be a cure
    To this war.

    In this war, boys are raised to be men.
    Brave they start,
    Fearful they end.
    This war will go on.
    It will never end.
    People will no longer be friends.

    Make it end.

    Make it end.

    Make this horrible war end.

  • 2018 Winning Poems

    2018 Winning Poems

    These are the winning poems of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2018 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. For more information on this annual peace poetry contest, and to read the winning poems from previous years, click here.

    First Place Adult
    Carla S. Schick

    When Birds Migrate, They Follow Nature
    (after Salgado’s photos of Migrations from Rwanda)

    Birds migrate; they instinctually know their path
    A woman, skin down to bone, rests on a vacated train track.
    Hiding in the bush, she gazes out at the photographer,
    Covers her mouth as her child, tied to her back, tries to rest.

    A woman, skin down to bone, sits on the side of a train track,
    Young children stare past smoking trees.
    The mother covers her mouth as her child tries to rest, looking up;
    The children bear no guns, one stands cross-armed, others look bewildered.

    Young children stare past the smoking trees;
    In the distance people are moving trapped in a genocide
    These children carry no arms, look out, look bewildered
    Endless cycles of war chase them down, forced migrations.

    In the distance people are moving trapped in a genocide
    Centuries of colonial destruction inflame conflicts
    Endless cycles of war chase down all sides in forced migrations
    The woman wears a wedding ring, but sits alone among dying children.

    Centuries of colonial destruction inflame internal wars
    Dysentery, bullets, cavernous quarries of wealth robbed
    The woman wears her wedding ring; at her side are dying children
    She draws her awakened baby closer to her warmth, wrapped in a checkered cloth.

    Dysentery, bullets, cavernous quarries of wealth robbed,
    She waits and looks back at the photographer with deep eyes
    She draws her awakened baby closer to her warmth, wrapped in a checkered cloth.
    Human remains scattered everywhere as they try to escape from certain death.

    She waits and looks back with deeply sunk eyes at the photographer;
    He is invisible in their lives and cannot deliver safety although he sends out warnings.
    Human remains scattered everywhere on the path away from a certain death
    We never see the expression on the photographer’s face or his hands.

    While images from Africa float before us in a New York gallery
    His body bears the illnesses from the deaths he has witnessed.

     

    Honorable Mention Adult
    Madison Trice

    Their Families Wore White

    if i had a dollar for the times i’ve been distrusted
    because i am not cynical enough
    because people say i am all hope, that if you ripped me open, i would bleed sunlight
    so people poke and stab and jab and tear
    asking impatiently, “why would you choose such a futile cause”
    master of hopeless causes, i will put the hope in hopeless, against all odds
    i will hold the hope like a butterfly between my fingers, gently, gently, and hold it up to my heartbeat to remind it that it is alive
    i will cradle it in war zones, between buildings hollow and shaken
    i will hide it away in government-given housing in far away places
    and when i am told to stop holding on
    i will release it, into a jar, with little holes in the lid to allow it to breathe
    and my butterfly and i will share the same air
    because i cannot afford the freezer burn of logic and detached conversations about the rationality of letting situations deteriorate,
    sitting in sections with people who have never met someone from the regions they debate
    no, i can’t afford to let go

     

    First Place Youth 13-18
    Stephanie Anujarerat

    Sleeping, Over

    We are restless in the dark,
    bright-eyed gold-painted by sodium glow swallowing faint moonlight
    whispering wonder at the black between stars.

    The weight on our tongues:
    Friday’s shooter drill, where we

    locked cardboard doors
    pulled down paper blinds for early dusk
    squeezed ourselves to roots and shrapnel in shadowy foxholes

    children to embryos to paintbrushes in plastic wombs or coffins.

    Now, like then, silence rattles in our lungs.
    Meanings spill from the dictionary of war:
    v. to press a finger tightly to bomb-shocked lips, quivering chin
    v. to steal the edge off the telltale scream of a gun
    n. the immutable heaviness of death and earth.

    You take my hand so we can fall asleep, together.

    Walkout day, mourning gathers outside the garden gate.
    The flag flies overhead. In the quiet
    you pluck petals off a shriveling crimson geranium. I count

    Seventeen for the lost.
    Seventeen for how many desert winters we’ve survived—
    lived, it should be. Rust flake petals, crumpled cardinals neatly
    ended, fluttering
    down.

    A promise.
    As we grow up and grow old we will plant gardens with white roses.
    We will not need them for early
    funerals, for hate that drives people to hate.

    We close our eyes, listening to each other breathe
    steadily, like courage.

     

    Honorable Mention Youth 13 – 18
    Emily Cho

    The 38th

    There are mountain gorals
    and deer and rare cranes that walk
    the breadth of soldiers and their boyhoods.
    Their fur smells of wetness and rain,
    and this is what snouts the canopies of barbed wire
    that crawl the spaces of blackened history.
    June 6th to July 7th, when my mother tongue was not Korean
    anymore, vernacular capitulated into shallow cries and
    even the sky writhed against the painful
    speed of fighter jets, oblique organs of
    white metal splitting cities into buildings
    into rooms into children into bad smells.
    If at night a northern boy
    wakes from a nightmare and watches the moon,
    my greatest concession is that I cannot feel his loneliness.
    In the morning, his small face may squint at the
    sun, his hand stretching toward that vast distance where soldiers crouch
    and whisper about home.

    I think of visiting, sprinting the sparse miles between two sister
    nations, estranged under a great wrongness, outrunning these
    historical truths, old letters and vernacular and crooning songs
    over military loudspeakers, wanting to savor that feeling of origin.

    I do not know when I will return to you,
    your staggering mountains and mukungwhas and
    mothers and fathers. The programs on television that
    show reuniting siblings: How much I have missed you.

    But in all my wrongness, in the ways my tongue
    and eyes and soul will have hardened,
    will you still take my hand?

     

    First Place Youth 12 and Under
    Milla Greek

    The Silence

    In the last hour of the last night, the shadows will dance away,
    and as the final candle flickers out, never to be lit again, the stars will fall away
    and past, present, and future will be enveloped in the newly midnight sky.
    The frostbitten mountain tops will fall into a deep sleep,
    and the snow will melt away, leaving the rivers to flow for the last time.
    The trees will whisper their final farewells into the wind before they, too,
    are silenced by the heavy darkness that will fall over them like a blanket.
    The low hum of the scattered rocks will cease as darkness falls,
    and with the darkness, the beautiful, calm, and silent darkness,
    everything will heal, the earth will come back together where it has been torn apart,
    the sky will lose the brown haze that has choked it for so long,
    and the air, the beautiful, essential air, will return to how it was when it was born, and be crisp, cool, sweet, and clear.
    All that is not wanted will go, and go silently, until all that is left becomes one, one with the world, the planet, the quiet and forever dark sky.
    The sun will set, and then all will be silent, silent and asleep.
    We will go softly, and calmly without making noise, and simply cease to exist,
    just like all other things unwanted.
    When all has rested, it will rise again, like a phoenix from his ashes. The snow will fall and the rivers will flow from the mountains to the seas, and the trees will whisper in the wind. The stars will return to the sky and then the sun will sing its beautiful song, and time will arise, and begin again.

  • 2017 Winning Poems

    These are the winning poems of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2017 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. For more information on this annual peace poetry contest, and to read the winning poems from previous years, click here.

    First Place Adult
    Nicole Melanson

    Manchester

    They went to hear music.
    The lucky ones came home
    missing only friends.

    Raising children in this world
    is like running upstairs
    with a glass of water
    clutched under your arm.

    I have five sons.
    They are frogs and snails
    and feathers dipped in gold.

    They are blueberry eyes
    and backs that curve to the palm
    like soap.

    They are the longest breath
    I’ve ever held.

    Sweat cools on my brow
    as they sleep. This
    is what passes for peace
    to a parent—

    a slackening jaw,
    the heart unclenching

    each night
    every child comes home.

     

    Honorable Mention Adult
    Andrea Livingston

    Paper Cranes

    Let us now find the courage, together,
    to spread peace and pursue a world
    without nuclear weapons.

    Barack Obama, the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima,
    May 27, 2016

    Wanting to make it right,
    President Obama read the instructions carefully.
    Take a square piece of Japanese paper,
    one with flowers, or maybe apricots, cherries,
    fold it from top to bottom, crease and open,
    then fold in half sideways.

    That day at Hiroshima,
    the president gave his handmade paper cranes
    to two schoolchildren, a symbol of peace
    so simple, yet years in the making,
    as if he wanted to promise
    these tallest of birds would forever soar
    above their city, their wings stretching
    into the clearest center of sky.

    Six decades ago,
    12-year-old Sadako Sasaki,
    her bones slowly disintegrating
    from “A-bomb disease,” carefully folded
    medicine labels, faded scraps of wrapping paper
    into a thousand cranes, as if to ask the gods
    that in return for her ancient offering,
    they would make the world well again.

     

    First Place Youth 13-18
    Ana K. Lair

    Before the War

    We never stayed at home.

    We were eleven, bony and wild,
    we sat and carved sticks with our teeth,

    still for an instant as dusk fled,
    then bolting off again, hungry for more chaos, more dirt,

    face paint and saliva.
    We tasted metal, ate bone.

    Smiles greasy with lying,
    our brothers told us a birch tree was a ghost’s hand.

    We slid past, its bent white claws
    screeching down the belly of our canoe.

    I’m sorry we don’t speak anymore,
    the day the telephone stopped announcing

    the other’s need, in its shrill metallic call.
    But no need for talk of that now.

    When I walk back through the autumn woods
    with leaves like raw meat in the cold,

    I see your teeth marks on the birch,
    I hear you crashing ahead through pine, howling mammal cry,

    feet flashing up like the warning of a deer’s tail
    as you caught the very first scent
    of our parents calling us home.

     

    Honorable Mention Youth 13 – 18
    Ella Cowan de Wolf

    The Numbers

    You suddenly see a set of random numbers, such as 374251. What comes to mind?

    I think of science, I think of math.
    I think of “old school” clocks and petals on a daisy gifted by a lover of poetry.
    I think that 3.14 is the start of a number so simple that it has cracked the minds of countless
    mathematicians yet is engraved into the minds of children before they can count to 100 in a
    different language.
    I think that 143, “I love you” flows so easily off the tongue of a 7 year old child with 3 less teeth
    than she wants, telling her 2 parents that she sees the world through looking glasses covered in
    blue waves of her own imagination.
    I think that it only took 4,224 pages and 7 books to redefine my entire childhood to believe that
    magic was granted to those who were chosen and that the boy with the lightning scar was too old
    to think about as I wrapped my head around the next 1,155 pages of a 3 part series of a girl on
    fire. This was my childhood.
    But now, I think of an old joke which makes the wrinkles of my smile shine bright as 4 is
    considered a study group, but 5 is a party. Yet, I wonder that it takes 2 to make a pair which is
    only 1 away from being lonely…
    And I know now that in 374,251 seconds I will be 4.332 days older than I am in existence at this
    moment in time, so I am going to become someone I am proud to show the world.
    Numbers define the essence of society itself, and with each new member I am reminded how
    small I am, how I am 1 in 7.125 billion, a large, never ending, form of 3.14, a number to confuse
    the greatest minds in the century, but then it dawns on me…it only takes 1 to make a difference.

     

    First Place Youth 12 and Under
    Kendall Cooper

    Colorblind

    I am colorblind, can’t you see, I can’t see you and you can’t see me,
    I see no black, no white, nor yellow, I see no harsh and see no mellow,
    I see no sick or healthy, and no poor or wealthy.
    I see no religion or race, no pretty or out of place.
    No skinny or fat, no I-don’t-like-that!
    I see faces, so many faces around the globe from different places.
    I see life, so many lives, like plants that grow and plants that thrive.
    I see sound, sweet music, as the rhythm is abundant in the world of human.
    I see touch, people touching the hearts of others.
    I see smiles, so many smiles, the ones that go on for miles and miles.
    I see laughter, curiosity having fun with the tips of grins,
    the laughs that brighten a day filled with grim.
    I see light, warmth, and a touch of love shining through cracks
    of a broken melody of color.

  • 2016’s Winning Poems

    2016 Poetry Contest

    The following poems were selected as the winners of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2016 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry contest. For more information about this annual contest, visit www.peacecontests.org. Click here to read the winning poems from all years of the contest.

    Fishbone Hair
    by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
    Adult Category, First Place

    I.
    Inside my niece Bianca’s old room I found two ziplocks stuffed. With rolls and rolls of hair.
    Dead as a
    doornail black as a tunnel hair thin. As strands of tumbling seaweed. Maybe it was my sister.
    Who
    stashed away Bianca’s locks so no one would see trying to save that rootless hair. That hair
    without a
    home.    It all
    fell out.

    II.
    The marrow should have worked. They said she had six months to live.

    III.
    That’s what doctors told the fishermen over 50 years ago while they were out at sea. Just miles
    away from
    Bikini. The day the sun exploded.

    IV.
    There is an old Chamorro legend that Guahan was once attacked. By a giant monster fish. The
    women,
    guided by their dreams, hacked off their hair. Wove their locks into a massive magical net. They
    caught
    the fish. They saved their islands.

    V.
    Thin, rootless
    fishbone hair
    black night   sky               catch    ash
    catch      moon                  catch
    stars
    for you Bianca
    for you

     

    What a Time to Be Alive
    by Jocelyn Chambers
    Adult Category, Honorable Mention

    death taught me how to dress.
    it says “not that one, these shoes instead, a little less vibrant and a little more docile, more
    humility, less confidence.”
    death taught me not to wear hoodies, to keep my head uncovered, to wear light colors
    instead of dark because i am dark enough already
    to buy a belt for every pair of pants i own, better yet, to not wear pants,
    death taught me how to do my hair, it says “less coil, more common, straighter, longer,
    thinner,” it burns my scalp and hands me a comb and says “isn’t it nice to run your
    fingers through it now,”
    death taught me who to like, what music to listen to, how to keep people comfortable,
    how to walk; “don’t limp, straight shoulders, but stay smaller than them,”
    it taught me my vocabulary, all of the big words that earn me awards such as ‘articulate,’
    ‘not like the rest of them,’ ‘a good one,’
    death is always telling me to be less, less african, more american, a welcome addition, a
    token, to lay myself bare and strip myself of any weapons, any threats
    death is an x-ray machine, and says if i do anything wrong, it will come
    as if i’m not dying to myself already
    death says “what a time to be alive.”
    because in this country, white is invisible.

     

    An incident at the bridge of no return
    by John B. Lee
    Adult Category, Honorable Mention

    in an assignment
    involving a clear view
    the young lieutenant
    was trimming a particular poplar tree
    so the Americans
    might observe without obstruction
    the deployment and movement
    of enemy guns, and
    training his axe
    on the aspen with its shivering leaf
    looking north to the bridge of no return
    he fell from a fatal blow to the brain from behind
    the cold tool blunting his last thought
    like the dark wedge
    where the burnt Y of the barkless trunk
    remains with its blackened knot
    like a blind eye fastened at the fork
    of two branches
    it stands there
    a scorched post crowned in rot
    with us living on
    in such a ridiculous world
    in the sad significance of risible things
    where what matters most
    seems valued least
    and what matters least
    is conserved
    in the chiseled knowing of stone

     

    For Nyakier
    by Allison Huang
    Youth Category (13-18), First Place Tie

    “Even if you die in the water, it’s better to be killed by snakes or crocodiles than
    by soldiers”
                                                                   –  Nyakier Gatluak, South Sudan (from NYT)

    On our way home, we roll over a hill & a deer
    leaps in front of the car
    loses its balance
    gracefully, not unlike a man
    heaves into a woman.

    The corpse lists on the asphalt like
    a body in a dark current, her belly still pulsing with
    something warm & vaguely fawn-like.
    A life within
    a life.

    I know children who leap into
    crocodile-infested waters to keep
    from knowing men. I know a boy
    who was born against a field of red

    petals,
    himself opened up. Who could name
    every curve of the gun, slept with it
    under his neck, a clay reminder dissolving

    the way a scream dissolves
    into a current.

    Tell me how to bring a child into a world where
    the river claims the boy who would rather face
    the teeth of a beast than face his older self.

    The water swells over him
    as a mother’s round stomach swells with a seed.

    So many poppies
    in the field, seeping against the blank
    bits of sky,
    poppies that are as dark
    as mouths.

     

    An Open Letter to the Bullet That Shot My Brother
    by Matthan Sutton
    Youth Category (13-18), First Place Tie

    Dear Bullet,

    You are not to blame, and it took me time to see but the way that you
    Scream through the air is similar to the way that he
    Screamed as the man in green pulled the trigger:
    Involuntarily.

    And your life must not have been easy either, a raindrop of molten
    Metal pounded to proliferate Man’s purpose in the world through
    Tightly packed and popped pistols in dark alleys and
    War valleys and demonstration rallies in countries where people are silenced
    Through violence and, to be the toy Men use when they
    Don’t get their money or their oil or their way in the world they built themselves. It
    Must be hard to fly for them. To stream through the sky only to
    Fall with the body you killed for them.

    When my brother came home he was
    Zipped up in a bag built for bodies and I find it funny that the zipper sealing
    Him in was made from the same metal as the object that
    Sealed his fate. And I find it funny that you were blamed when the zipper did just
    As much to hold him in the grips of sleep.

    I think, Bullet, that we hate you because blaming ourselves is too
    Hard to do. Because bullets flying are the justification for more bullets and if we blame the
    Object we can ignore the push. If we blame the bullet. The Barrel. The powder. The hammer.
    The trigger. The soldier. The war. The government. The “Man”.
    If we blame the fire we can ignore the match: our hate.

    I forgive you, even though you have nothing to apologize for,
    And even though I never actually met my brother
    And even though I never knew his name
    And even though he was American and I am Iranian
    I forgive you Bullet, for screaming.

     

    Me and You
    by Kiran Treacy-Hind
    Youth Category (12 and Under), First Place

    The world talks to me in my head and birds chirping in the wind and the sun shining on my face.
    Dogs looking for their bones, while I see beauty in every face.
    The world brings us together,
    it moves as slow as a sloth.
    People live in different ways, treat them the same way.
    The world has so many mysteries
    that no one knows and may not find.
    We all have two shadows inside us, but it helps us, it finds who we are, in this place where
    people live and die, and will never find why they were born.
    The world brings us together, like a mother and her child.
    It moves us, helps us, and cares for us. So why are we killing the earth, if we help it,
    it will grow so we can grow.
    We may feel helpful to poor children,
    We may be helpful to people that
    have been bullied and all sadness all
    hate will wash away, as the sun shines
    on the water, as the birds fly in the
    wind and never stop seeing beauty.


    I Remember
    by Inica Kotasthane
    Youth Category (12 and Under), Honorable Mention

    I remember those days,
    When I was a young, innocent child.
    I never had understood what was going on,
    For those long, dark six years.

    It first started with the radio,
    My parents chatting nervously,
    While rushed reports were heard on
    That old ‘speaking box.’

    Then, the noises came.
    They would awake me in the middle of the night.
    The whooshing of airplanes flying overhead,
    And mother closing those dark curtains.

    Those days father refused for mother and I
    To go outside onto the streets.
    I used to be so happy because I wouldn’t go to school,
    But little did I know about the real reason.

    When dinner was scarce,
    And I ate every last crumb of bread.
    When I looked out the window to see
    Poor humans being beat to death.

    I remember those days not as clearly,
    As I did back then.
    And even after all these years,
    I still wonder why a person would do that to another.

    Why do we do this to one another,
    Are we animals: predators and prey?
    We must find a way to get together,
    And see where peace has gone.

  • Foundation Announces 2014 Peace Poetry Award Winners

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    CONTACT: Carol Warner, Poetry Award Coordinator
    (805) 965-3443
    cwarner@napf.org

    Santa Barbara, CA (October 15, 2014) – The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of its Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. Since 1995, the Foundation has encouraged poets to explore and illuminate positive visions of peace and the human spirit through these Awards. The poetry awards are offered in three categories: Adult; Youth (13 to 18); and Children (12 and under).

    In the Adult category, Devreaux Baker, from Mendocino, California, was awarded the $1,000 First Place Prize for her poem “In the Year of the Drone.” Ms. Baker has published three books of poetry, with a fourth to be published in January 2015. She has taught poetry workshops in France, Mexico and the United States; and Poetry in the Schools through the California Poets In Schools Program. Her awards include the 2011 PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Hawaii Council on Humanities International Poetry Prize, and the Women’s Global Leadership Poetry Award.

    The First Place Prize of $200 in the Youth (13 to 18) category was awarded to Sophia Marusic for her poem “Vietnam: January 28, 1973.” Ms. Marusic lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and is a sophomore at John Burroughs School. She is the art editor of her school literary magazine and is a member of the St. Louis Poetry Center.

    An Honorable Mention in the Youth (13 to 18) category was awarded to Alice Yanhong Lu for her poem “Free.” Ms. Lu lives in North Potomac, Maryland, and attends the University of Maryland, College Park.

    In the Children (12 and under) category, the First Place Prize of $200 was awarded to Leila Metres for her poem “Soil Soul.” Leila lives in University Heights Ohio, where she is home schooled.

    The Peace Poetry Awards are named for the late Barbara Mandigo Kelly, a poet, pianist and peace advocate.

    Two anthologies of winning poems in the annual Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards have been published. The first anthology, The Poetry of Peace, was published by Capra Press in 2003. The second anthology, Never Enough Flowers: The Poetry of Peace II, was published by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 2012. The winning poems since 1995 are also available to read at http://www.peacecontests.org/poetry/winners.pdf.

    For more information, including the 2015 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards Guidelines, please visit the Foundation’s website at http://www.peacecontests.org/poetry/index.php or contact the Foundation at (805) 965-3443.

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    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan international organization with consultative status to the United Nations. For 32 years, the Foundation’s mission has been to educate and advocate for peace and a world free of nuclear weapons, and to empower peace leaders.