GREENFIELD — “We live in an area where you can’t spit without hitting a poet,” said Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest Coordinator Dennis Finnell. “And I mean that in a good way.”
It’s lucky for the contest that poets are plentiful in Franklin County, as the contest enters its 25th year.
An audience packed Stoneleigh-Burnham School’s Capen Room to listen to the poems of 20 contest finalists, whose work had been judged by renowned poets.
“To the finalists,” said Kay Lyons of the Greenfield Public Library, “you are already winners.”
Dennis Martin Piana of Colrain was the adult finalist who won the coveted Poet’s Seat for the coming year with his poem, “In Elounda.” His name will be engraved on the chair, as has been done for the past 24 years. He also won a special plate made for the contest by the Asparagus Valley Pottery Trail Potters.
The runner-up adult poet was Wilson Roberts with “Cider Day in Franklin County.”
Among the 12- to 14-year-old finalists, Gina Magin won first place for “Ohana Means Family,” about coping with a family medical emergency. Second place was Gaelen Mast, with the poem “Trampoline.”
All the 15- to 18-year-old finalists were from the Franklin County Technical School, in teacher Alyssa Kelly’s English class. She read the poems of her first- and second-place winning students, who were working jobs Thursday night: Jake Amidon won with “For the Love of Cars,” and Nick Baronski came in second with “Plumbing Love.”
The Friends of the Greenfield Public Library has sponsored the contest every year since 1991. The competition was created in honor of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, the poet for who “Poet’s Seat” was named. Tuckerman lived in Greenfield from 1847 until his death in 1873 and was considered by his contemporaries — Emerson, Thoreau, and Tennyson — to be a gifted poet.