Two Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students have earned recognition in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional competition with one advancing to the national competition.
Michaela Stevens, a junior from Hot Springs, received a Regional Golden Key for her poem “expired film” in the writing competition. Recipients of Golden Keys advance to the national competition, which will announce award winners on March 22.
Gwen Oliver, a junior from Jonesboro, received a Regional Silver Key for her mixed-media artwork “Simplistic.”
The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. It is among the nation’s most prestigious program for creative teams and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Previous award-winners during the competition’s history include Andy Warhol, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Tschabalala Self and others.
Stevens decided to enter the competition after receiving an email from Brian Isbell, one of ASMSA’s humanities instructors, alerting students about the contest. She discovered the competition provided scholarships for some contestants. It was also an opportunity for her to share her poetry with others.
“I had really been wanting to share my poetry more, so I thought I might as well enter and see what happens. I sent a few poems I was considering entering to Mr. Isbell, and he helped me pick the poem I ended up submitting,” she said.
She wrote “expired film” during the summer of 2022 while her family was driving to Orange Beach, Ala. The poem is inspired by her homesickness for Serbia, the country in which she grew up.
“I started thinking of all the things stopping me from going back to Serbia and how I wish I could just drive myself back,” she said. “But that’s not possible, and even if it was, my life never seems to go where I think it is going to, so I don’t think I actually arrive at my destination.
“I wrote the poem specifically during my family’s drive to Alabama, and I started thinking of my life as a road trip. I get distracted and take circuitous paths to get places. I accumulate good and bad memories along the way. All that is to say that this poem is about missing a home you can never go back to but accepting that and living your life nonetheless.”
expired film
i’ve always wanted to smoke a cigarette
but i can hardly breathe already
the smell of smoke is home on black-and-white film
so nostalgia could be worth it
i’ve always wanted to drive myself home
but there’s an ocean in the way
if not, i’d veer off and get lost
stop to smell a rose, let its thorns draw blood
a rose-tinted rearview mirror
the past a distorted, dizzy blur
an outlet mall, an open field,
a highway keeps me grounded
running red lights and stopping on green
passenger seat full of pain, backseat of baggage
a road trip through the bible belt,
never knowing where i’m headed
Stevens was surprised to learn she had earned recognition in the contest. She had won essay contests in the past, but this was the first time she had entered a contest for her poetry.
“I feel like art and writing, especially poetry, are so subjective that I really had no idea whether other people would resonate with my poems the way I did. It felt so validating to learn that my work actually had merit, and I’m so excited to see if my poem stands up on the national level,” Stevens said.
Oliver said she has creating art since the age of 5 but she started taking it seriously in junior high school and into her classes at ASMSA. She participated in the Scholastic competition last year and decided to enter again when students were notified about it this fall. “Simplistic” was a typography assignment in which the letters of the alphabet as well as the numbers 0-9 had to be represented in the piece for an art class.
“My goal was to break the letters and numbers down to their most basic form,” Oliver said. “Every square in the grid was made individually with construction paper and masking tape and then placed onto the final grid.”