Mendham Teen Wins Statewide Poetry Contest

MENDHAM, NJ — A senior at West Morris Mendham High School recently placed in a statewide poetry competition.

The writing competition took place at Morristown’s Festival of Books last month. The contest, of which the prompt was “the color red,” was split into three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

Isabella Haddock placed third in the poetry category for her poem “Forget-Me-Not.” According to West Morris Mendham, the work was inspired by a eulogy she had written for her grandmother.

“She just made my childhood so magical,” she said of her grandmother.

See the winning poem below:

We searched the gardens when I was only a babe,
Grandmother and I, looking for beautiful things
Rare things of vibrance and wonder
And everything in between

The flower fairies that I swore
Lived beyond the pages of our picture books
The ones I’d build houses for
Of toadstools and cotton and mica
The ones I’d want to catch a glimpse of so badly—
Only a glimpse

But I lost my last tooth;
That made me a girl
I hid my molar from the tooth fairy
So as to convince her that I hadn’t grown up

Houses emptied
Gardens too
And only tiles
Would catch our tears

Tiles on the
Bathroom floor
That I cried on
Until I
Couldn’t
Breathe

I stopped wearing my lilac perfume
And listening to our favorite songs
To leave myself nothing
To associate that December with

Am I still a girl?
Perhaps I’ve grown too old to call myself that
My perfume smells of amber and saffron
And old favorites of ours
Have been plucked from playlists

But in our gardens
Thickets of marigolds bloom crimson
Behind bushes that sink
With the weight of scarlet roses
With much to carry
Yet all the more beautiful
And each dandelion is wished upon
And sent to the skies

Sometimes I catch a pair of iridescent wings
Under the forget-me-nots
And I laugh;
I’ve learned to believe in them again

For they are the ones that bring color to the world
Illustrate the earth with their constellations of daisies
And dapple their meadows with the very primroses
That Grandmother would leave for me by the fountain

And although I can’t always see them with my eyes
I can promise that flower fairies are as real as can be
And I need not have searched all those years
For my Flower Fairy was right by my side

____

The young poet also enjoys novel writing, screenwriting, and journalistic writing. She is currently in the process of writing a children’s book with fellow student and illustrator Dylan Parks.

Placing second in the poetry competition was Libby Peckman of Highland Park High School for “Predator,” and first was Jhanvi Wong of Millburn High School for “Red Tastes Like Want.”

Click here to see the results of Morristown’s Festival of Books’ writing contest.