For ninety years, teenagers with outstanding creative talents have applied for the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. This year, a record 230,000 students applied, but only 15 were awarded the top prize of a Portfolio Gold Medal. They join a prestigious group of awards alumni, including Andy Warhol, Lena Dunham, Sylvia Plath, and Zac Posen.
Two winners share their stories and hopes for the future with The Takeaway. Luisa Banchoff, a National Student Poet from Arlington, Virginia, won the Portfolio Gold Medal for writing. And Greg Dugdale from Carmel, Indiana won the Portfolio Gold Medal for fashion design.
Both will be honored tonight, along with the other Scholastic winners, at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Broken Rib
In early morning they slip from sleep
with lungs sprinting to find unchoked air to breathe,
steadfast things that once knew sighs from shrieks.
Hands clasped together, he and she pepper their days
with games you will never play,
pretending their souls were not hot enough to burn down the houses.
Past snug houses
where newborns sleep
they walk to the jungle-gymed park where older siblings play,
where you can squint and see the futures breathe
whispers of waiting days,
of tenth birthdays and diploma handshakes and homecoming shrieks.
Can you hear our child’s shrieks?
He wants to ask the houses.
The playground keeps no ledger of days
they have sat on this bench where better men sleep
by night and blissful parents breathe
by day, their thoughts building castles of pretend-play.
She watches the realities play
before her as her body silently shrieks
against itself. She thinks of when her mouth was a cradle that had only to breathe
and her spine was woven of little white houses
whose walls were held up with a second sleep.
When she counted down days
that would later shake against themselves. The days
that had authored a play
that could only ever send its audience to some half-dreaming sleep.
The days whose nights heard blinding shrieks
with claws that scratched at hollow air. What are houses
built for? But he could not breathe
the answer that danced on the unused cradle’s lip. To breathe
is to be. God made a lie on the sixth day
when he took the rib from Adam, she said. It is written in the houses
where no children will play
and no routine morning shrieks
will wake parents from malnourished sleep.
So today they reteach one another how to breathe like showing a child how to play
and together walk back the days as the tree-tangled bird shrieks
and the houses silently sleep.
Broken Rib
By Luisa Banchoff
In early morning they slip from sleep
with lungs sprinting to find unchoked air to breathe,
steadfast things that once knew sighs from shrieks.
Hands clasped together, he and she pepper their days
with games you will never play,
pretending their souls were not hot enough to burn down the houses.
Past snug houses
where newborns sleep
they walk to the jungle-gymed park where older siblings play,
where you can squint and see the futures breathe
whispers of waiting days,
of tenth birthdays and diploma handshakes and homecoming shrieks.
Can you hear our child’s shrieks?
He wants to ask the houses.
The playground keeps no ledger of days
they have sat on this bench where better men sleep
by night and blissful parents breathe
by day, their thoughts building castles of pretend-play.
She watches the realities play
before her as her body silently shrieks
against itself. She thinks of when her mouth was a cradle that had only to breathe
and her spine was woven of little white houses
whose walls were held up with a second sleep.
When she counted down days
that would later shake against themselves. The days
that had authored a play
that could only ever send its audience to some half-dreaming sleep.
The days whose nights heard blinding shrieks
with claws that scratched at hollow air. What are houses
built for? But he could not breathe
the answer that danced on the unused cradle’s lip. To breathe
is to be. God made a lie on the sixth day
when he took the rib from Adam, she said. It is written in the houses
where no children will play
and no routine morning shrieks
will wake parents from malnourished sleep.
So today they reteach one another how to breathe like showing a child how to play
and together walk back the days as the tree-tangled bird shrieks
and the houses silently sleep.