GENESEO, NY -- For 10 years, Dr. Rob Doggett has run the Genesee Valley Peace Poetry contest, encouraging students in grade K through 8 to write poems about peace—whatever that might mean to them. This year’s event is May 10 at 2 p.m. in Wadsworth Auditorium and is free and open to the public.
“The goal of the contest,” said Dr. Doggett, Professor of English at SUNY Geneseo, “is to give students the opportunity to reflect creatively on the theme of peace at a time when so much of what they encounter in the media is dominated by images of violence.”
Over 1,200 students submit each year, whether as individual writers or as part of a class or even school-wide activity. Professor Doggett, aided by student judges and organizers at SUNY Geneseo, has grown this event into a major feature of the community calendar within the Genesee Valley: a Mother’s Day celebration at which roughly 80 students selected as winners and commendations are invited to read their poems to an audience including their families, teachers, and area residents. The
“I honestly feel that this contest can help change the lives of students because it helps them to discover a talent that they didn’t know they had,” continues Doggett. The contest has helped thousands of young people explore, reflect on and communicate about large ideas that shape their daily lives: What does peace mean to them? What brings them peace in their lives? How might young people help to create a more peaceful world? At times the students’ poems deal with domestic strife, or loved ones in war zones; at times they elegize hunting trips or calm moments with friends. The Peace Poetry Contest sparks conversations on all these topics, with the presentation chapbook a memorial for students to take home—and an inspiration to their peers.
The event will be hosted by the English Department at SUNY Geneseo in Wadsworth Auditorium.