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19th Annual Caldwell Poetry and Recitation Award Winners: April 2025

The Caldwell Poetry and Recitation Award winners were announced at LSWA's End-of-Year Festival on April 16, 2025 and, thanks to a generous gift from Jeanne and Will M. Caldwell, monetary prizes were given to each winner. Winning written poems will also be published in this year's Arts & Literary Journal, which will be distributed in Fall 2025. Please join us in congratulating the winners listed below!

Written Poetry

First-Year Students

Jose Lorenzo Mendez for "Midwest Suburbia is a F*cking Acid Trip"

Addie Siembieda for "We Can’t All Be Constellations" and "Land of Entrapment"

Eddy Holcomb for "machinists"

Oummu Kabba for "Dead Skin"

Lillian Maloney for "Keeping Peace" 

Gabriele Maldonado for "Skin"

Michael Hong for "Theseus' Ship" and "you"

Student Leaders and Alumni

Charlie Shang for "An atheist’s prayer" and "ailing haibun"

Aileen Dosev for "I come out to my mom & she takes me shopping" and "The interviewer asks where I see myself in 10 years"

Utsa Chaturvedi for "Borderless" and "Between Three Worlds"

Eleanor Barrett for "Did you know that Mark Zuckerberg has a compound in Hawaii?" and "going about the morning: thinking of my mother in a funeral home in Texas" 

Avery Thompson for "sea glass"

Julie Zhou for "Ching Chang Chong" and "The World was a Five Layer Burrito"

Isabella Crow for "when the world was soup"

Taylor Bentley for "Piercing Plan"

Martha Schaller for "grief is dumb and stupid and i hate it" 

Original Poetry Performances

First-Year Students

Addie Siembieda for “Hometown Snapchat Stories”

Student Leaders and Alumni

Eleanor Barrett for “Did you know that Mark Zuckerberg has a compound in Hawaii?”

Aileen Dosev for "you say there is no life here"

Aman Khandaker for “You Named Me Iltifat”

Avery Thompson for “King”

Salem Loucks for “Wax Trap” 

Interpretive Poetry Performances

First-Year Students

Addie Siembieda for “Notes from the Road” by Tamaya Winder

Student Leaders and Alumni

Lauren Brace for “At The Spring Dawn” by Angelina Weld Grimke

Audrey Whitton for “No. 1 Daydream” by James Whitton

Artist Talks

First-Year Students

Brandon Ma for “Conveying Emotions with Musical Devices”

Student Leaders and Alumni

Ace Bell for “Chaotic Creativity and Coping Through Collages”

Nkenna Nzerem for “Are mushrooms cool? Morel less.”

Hannah Kryzhan for “THE ÜBER-MARIONETTE”

Alicia Xie for “J.S. Bach: Allemanda”

Juliette Todd for “My Heart Songs” 

Non-Poetry Recitations

First-Year Students

Michael Hong for “Grandma”

Student Leaders and Alumni

Aman Khandaker for "Nameless"

Previous Caldwell Poetry Award Winners