2024 Wisconsin Sijo Competition
Winners | Judges | Winners' Sijo
Winners
| Adult Division | Senior Division | Junior Division | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Prize | Elizabeth Jorgensen Waukesha, WI sijo |
Payton Teel Hartland, WI (Elizabeth Jorgensen) sijo |
Carder Phillippi Arpin, WI (Kate Van Haren) sijo |
| Runners-up |
Roman Montemorano Madison, WI sijo |
Jessica Heckenkamp Delafield, WI (Elizabeth Jorgensen) |
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| Elyse Jungbluth Hartland, WI (Elizabeth Jorgensen) |
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| Landon Kozlowski Hartland, WI (Elizabeth Jorgensen) |
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( ) Teacher's name
I found the Wisconsin Sijo Competition in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets newsletter. While most of my poetry is free verse, I enjoy writing with constraints. I developed a finer sense of both crafted surprise and rhythmic narrative working with the Sijo form, and felt free to connect the personal to the cosmological. I aspire to write poetry for the rest of my days, and in doing so, enhance my connection with language and its users. I consider Zhuangzi, the 4th-century BCE philosopher, my hero. Zhuangzi's unconventional parables on usefulness, success, and metaphysics are important guides for my journey.
Please let me know if there is anything else you need. Thank you for putting together this competition and for considering & selecting my work.
Senior division
My name is Payton Teel and I go to Arrowhead High School in Hartland, Wisconsin. I discovered this competition through my Creative Writing class, taught by Ms. Jorgensen. When initially introduced to sijos, it was different than any other poetry style I’ve seen before. I learned that I could use my creativity to my advantage and make a clever twist for the short piece. I aspire to attend UW-Madison and become a part of the School of Education.
I want to be an elementary school teacher when I’m older. The person I would consider to be my hero is my brother Connor because he is a very intelligent individual and constantly puts his best effort forward. He graduated from the University of Minnesota as an engineer and is living out his dreams in Denver, Colorado. He is a friend to all, makes everyone smile, and is overall an amazing human being.
I got the inspiration for this poem while lying on the beach under Fourth of July fireworks. I had just learned what a sijo poem was—per my Creative Writing summer course offered by Arrowhead High School—and I loved learning how to write so concisely and intently. Creative Writing not only introduced me to contests such as this one, but it taught me how many different styles of poetry there are. I’ll be forever grateful to Ms. Jorgensen, the instructor of this class, for diversifying my writing experience in this way.
Moving forward, my goal is to continue learning as much as possible about the variety of ways to express myself through writing.
Hi! My name is Elyse Jungbluth and I am a 17 year old junior at Arrowhead high school in Hartland. I found out about this competition during my Creative Writing summer school class this past summer while we were in our Sijo poem unit.
This contest helped me to realize that drawing inspiration from your emotions is one of the best ways to write about what's important to you and something that helps build a connection between you and the reader. This also ties into what I want to do with the rest of my life, psychology. This contest really showed me how big of a role our personalities and experiences play in all sorts of areas in our lives, even if we don’t realize it. Additionally, it’s not just our experiences that influence our lives, or in this case writings, it’s also about the people who surround us.
My mom has been my biggest supporter since day one and I have her to thank for my hard working attitude and for her making me believe I can be whoever I want, even if it’s something I had never thought about before, like a poet..