Student’s poem part of anthology book

It wasn’t exactly a dark and stormy night when inspiration struck Maggie Gibson — but it was a grim and rainy day last spring.

Gibson, then a second-grader in Jenna Shultes’ class at Peterson School, had already written a poem to fulfill a class assignment. The second-graders were wrapping up a poetry unit, and everyone had to write his or her own poem. Gibson had penned one about building a doghouse for her dog.

Then it rained.

Tiny raindrops adorned the grass and leaves outside. They were beautiful, and Gibson knew she’d found her poem.

“I didn’t really have an idea. I just started writing something down,” said Gibson, now 8 years old and a third-grader at Peterson. “I thought of it when it was raining. You know how there’s dew drops on the ground?”

Her poem, “Dew Drops,” was selected for publication in “A Celebration of Poets,” an anthology published by Creative Communication. The group named Gibson one of the top 10 poets in kindergarten through third grade.

Unlike some “contests,” in which all submitted poems are published in anthologies, which are then available for purchase, Creative Communication is a true competition. The organization rejects more entries than it accepts, according to the Creative Communication Web site, www.poeticpower.com.

That makes Gibson’s achievement all the more notable, Shultes said. She was the only top-10 winner from Montana, but 10 of her classmates’ poems were also selected for publication.

“They did really well last year,” Shultes said.

The class wrote poems to wrap up their poetry unit. They’d used Lucy Calkins Units of Study in class, a program Shultes praised.

“It’s pretty advanced for second grade,” she said, explaining that the curriculum strives to teach students “how to show what they’re feeling instead of just writing what they’re feeling.”

“It teaches them to see with poets’ eyes,” she said.

The experience was good for the class, including some who’d already made up their minds that they would never be good writers.

“Some of the students discovered that they have a gift for poetry,” Shultes said. “That was a neat process to watch.”

The curriculum teaches children the basics of writing a poem. Step one, Shultes told her students, is “you need to find something that gives you a big, strong feeling to write about.”

Once students have their ideas, they learn to experiment with word choices and line breaks, “so they really have that music in their poem,” Shultes said.

Gibson’s poem about building a doghouse apparently lacked that music.

“The poem I did before really wasn’t that good,” she said.

“Dew Drops” seemed to flow much better, and after a couple of revisions, she handed it in. Shultes doesn’t remember Gibson rewriting the poem at all.

“She just liked it the way it was,” Shultes said. “It really was just simple and beautiful.”

Gibson had no idea at first that her teacher was going to submit her poem in a contest. She wrote it for the class assignment and a poetry reading for the parents.

It wasn’t until just before Thanksgiving, months after Shultes had submitted the poems, that Creative Communication announced the contest winners. Shultes, Peterson Principal Rick Anfenson and Gibson’s mother, Jill, surprised Gibson in her third-grade classroom in November.

She was stunned when they told her she had been named a top 10 poet.

“I’m like, what?!” she said. “Yeah, I was excited.”

A few weeks later, “A Celebration of Poets” arrived in the mail. There, on page 11, was “Dew Drops” and Gibson’s name.

The young poets where excited about being published, Shultes said. In addition to Gibson, Blaynton Erbelding, Brady Exferd, Abigail Girardot, Jadyn Hernandez, Christian Holguin, Autumn Hughes, Austin Thomas, Max Warnell, Samantha Waters and Sierra Wilhelm had poems published in the anthology.

“I know that seeing their names was really a thrill for them, just being a published author,” Shultes said.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com