Pulitzer Center Update July 12, 2024
K-12 Students Amplify Journalism in Moving Poetry ✍️
Students are invited to enter poems written in response to news stories to the Fighting Words Poetry Contest. This workshop guides teachers and students in how to craft a successful entry.
Congratulations to the 2024 Fighting Words Poetry Contest Winners!
“Water me at my roots.
I can only grow when I am
connected to where I come from;
Pour into my mother too as
she is the earth that brings forth
new life.”
– "Healing Roots” by Charisma Holly
Charisma Holly, an 11th-grade student from Detroit, offers an ode to human-planetary symbiosis that shows how tending the Earth is a way of caring for oneself. Her poem is inspired by Justin Cook’s story “The Soil Farmers: Black Food Sovereignty and Climate Solutions,” which explores sustainable agriculture and Black ancestral farming techniques. The story features fourth-generation North Carolina farmer Kendrick Ransome, who explains: “It's a healing process, as in we're healing the soil, we're healing the land, you know, along the way.” Holly’s poem reproduces his words, allowing them to bloom across the space of a full stanza—and also adds, “we’re healing ourselves.”
Holly is one of 1,400 K-12 students who entered our seventh annual Fighting Words Poetry Contest. They represent 16 countries, 36 U.S. states, and D.C. Every student included lines from a Pulitzer Center-supported news story, and used their poems to amplify and give fresh perspectives on critical issues facing our world.
This week, we’re thrilled to share the 21 winning poems, judged in five categories based on the focus areas students wrote about: Climate and Environment, Global Health, Human Rights, Information and Artificial Intelligence, and Peace and Conflict.
Aigerim Bibol (11th grade, Maryland) uses computer code to challenge AI algorithms’ objectification of femme-presenting bodies. William Taylor (second grade, Tennessee) writes an impassioned ode to science and the newly developed “super banana.” Giya Agarwal (10th grade, Washington) pens lyrical letters of affirmation to eight women who fled Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover.
We invite you to read the contest winners’ work and listen to their recorded performances to see how students are using poetry to connect with and respond to news stories. In some cases, their poems show us a path forward. In response to Simón(e) D. Sun and Florence Ashley’s essay on debunking anti-trans myths, Jacob Jing (11th grade, Texas) writes:
“Know
that we are still here anyways, translating longing
into hope, violating your falsified science
just by persisting. Know that we are heading towards
something sweeter, something
kinder. All of us embracing
this social contagion of love.”
Best,
Impact
Pulitzer Center-supported work has won multiple awards in the past few weeks.
- Grantee Jennifer Adler won the climate category of the 2024 Earth Photo Awards for her photos of a scientist inspecting corals in a Florida nursery, part of Adler’s Pulitzer Center project The Uncertain Future of America’s Most Iconic Coral Reef with Benji Jones for Vox. See this week’s Photo of the Week, below.
- The project Amazon Underworld won a 2024 Gabo Award in the coverage category at the Gabo Festival in Bogotá, Colombia. Rainforest Investigations Network Fellow Bram Ebus and a team of journalists uncovered crime dynamics in the Amazon region for InfoAmazonia.
- Exposing Inequalities: How the Health Care System Failed in Venezuela, by Ricardo Barbar, Mariengracia Chirinos, and Indira Rojas, won Venezuela’s 2024 National Journalism Contest in the best coverage category. Their project for Prodavinci uncovered the gaps and shortcomings of public health care in Venezuela.
- Tony Bartelme, Andrew Whitaker, and Borso Tall won a 2024 Society for Features Journalism Award for their project, The Saharan Connection, which explored how dust from the Sahara Desert affects tropical storms globally.
Photo of the Week
"Hauntingly beautiful bleached elkhorn corals (Acropora palmata) stand like ghosts on a Florida reef. Going back to Florida felt like seeing an old friend but I wished it was under happier circumstances. This was an emotionally difficult story to photograph in my home waters—seeing the stark, white corals takes your breath away and brings tears to your eyes."
—Jennifer Adler
This message first appeared in the July 12, 2024, edition of the Pulitzer Center's weekly newsletter. Subscribe today.
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