Student wins a poetic victory

Erica Berry's look at age-old Romeo and Juliet legend earns a national poetry award

By Ray Pitz

The Beaverton Valley Times, Oct 11, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Erica Berry of Catlin Gabel's poem "Romeo and Juliet" was chosen for a national award.

Ray Pitz / Times Newspapers

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A Catlin Gabel sophomore has been named one of 15 worldwide winners of a prestigious poetry contest for young people.

Erica Berry’s “Romeo and Juliet” was selected as one of the top selections to receive a 2007 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award as part of Britain’s number one competitions for young poets.

Winners were announced last Thursday on National Poetry Day.

Berry was one of more than 4,500 young people who submitted poems to the contest and was one of only three international winners.

“I was ecstatic,” Berry said of the news.

The poem Berry submitted was originally written last February as part of an assignment/competition given to all upper middle school students.

The challenge of the English class was to write a love poem without using 15 to 20 words normally associated with such pieces. That meant avoiding such favorite romantic standbys such as “love” and “passion.”

Having recently read Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Berry used it as the inspiration of her poem.

“I wrote it in one night, two drafts,” she said. “It wasn’t too hard to write.”

Surprisingly, the poem did not place in the English department competition, said Berry. However, a friend’s mother urged Berry and other students to enter the Foyle Young Poets contest.

News of her victory came in the form of an unmarked letter, received by Berry’s parents who didn’t know she had entered the contest and were about to toss the unorthodox-looking piece of mail when she intercepted it.

Berry is no stranger to submitting work to writing contests. In the seventh grade Berry was the top Oregon gold medal winner as part of the Letters About Literature contest.

She wrote a piece about one of her favorite authors, Cornelia Funke, who wrote “Inkheart.”

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