By Charles Honey
School News Network


Aliya Hall loves the work of poets Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou and Chinaka Hodge. Their strong voices have served as inspiration for her as she’s dabbled in writing and spoken-word poetry.

“The first thing that ever inspired me to write poetry was seeing people that are my color doing it,” said Aliya, an incoming junior at Godwin Heights High School. She won first place for her poem “Hawk Island Girl,” in the high school through undergraduate division of the 51st annual Dyer-Ives Poetry Contest.

Hall, along with East Rockford Middle School eighth-grader Alissa Vezikov who won the kindergarten through eighth grade division, read her winning poem at the Grand Rapids Public Library during the 50th annual Festival of the Arts. In 2016, the Dyer-Ives Poetry Competition became a program of the Grand Rapids Public Library, funded by the GRPL Foundation–Dyer-Ives Foundation Poetry Fund.

For her winning piece, Hall won $125 and publication in Voices, issued by the Grand Rapids Public Library.

Tapping into Memories 

Hall’s winning poem, “Hawk Island Girl,” was inspired by the poem “to the notebook kid” by Eve Ewing, a Chicago-based writer. She tapped into her own memories of family visits to Hawk Island Park in Lansing, basing the girl in the poem on herself.

“It was my first time ever doing something like this. It was very emotional for me,” Hall said about reading her poem at the library. “Writing is everything to me. I put all that I can into my writing. My readers, I want them to pull whatever they can from it.”

Hall has attended the Grand Rapids Creative Youth Center, which offers after-school creative writing programming. Also, she was also one of two local students to attend the International Congress of Youth Voices, an experience she wrote about for School News Network. She is returning to the event, which connects students with accomplished writers, activists, and elected officials, as an alumna in August.

She hopes to attend Hampton University, in Virginia, and pursue journalism, creative writing and business.

For more stories on area schools, visit the School News Network website, schoolnewsnetwork.org.