Bunker Hill Community College Student Participates at the 2024 Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Showcase
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
April is National Poetry Month, and what better way to celebrate poets’ role in our culture than with one of our own? Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) student Luleta Meharenna represented BHCC at the prestigious 2024 Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Showcase sponsored by Grub Street Writing Center and the Mass Poetry on April 11. Luleta was one of 17 Boston undergraduate students who read an original poem from the Showcase’s published anthology, Future In Verse: Spotlighting the Voices of Young Poets as Glimpses into the Future.
The SUM Poets Collective of Bunker Hill Community College nominated SUM member Luleta Meharenna and BHCC was the only community college participating in the showcase. “I am so excited and grateful to have witnessed the connections cultivated in the Massachusetts poetry world over the past two years and our students' amazing writing and poise,” said BHCC English Professor Deborah Schwartz.
Luleta is proudly Eritrean-American. She is earning an associate's degree in Spanish and plans to transfer to a four-year institution to earn a bachelor’s degree. Poetry became a way for her to understand the world and learn of life’s true, deeper meanings. You can read her poem titled “Ways of Being” below.
Mass Poetry brings together professor-nominated undergraduate poets from more than 15 colleges in Greater Boston every year. With a professor or faculty member’s guidance in practicing and revising a poem, one young artist from each institution will perform an original set at an intercollegiate showcase. The event included a keynote address from local Boston poet Diannely Antigua about developing craft, navigating life as a working artist, and understanding poets' more significant roles and responsibilities in illustrating our shared future.
Ways of Being
A way of being
A selfless force that renders compassion to thy foe
That fawns as your friend Love is as love does
A pistol of volition
Piercing the foe’s heart Revealing the vulnerable intrinsic desire
Caved within deep
We all innately have
Yet roam lifeless til found
A way of being
Rare as it seems
Strange til familiar
We find our true-selves
Encapsulated under egos
False premonitions of love backtrack i
Into ones hurt enabling blame and loveless sorrow
Moans of lust blaring from screen mirrors
To abide fears of being alone
Exchanged for brief relief
And the death of true affection
The night remains
Isolating til desolate
Tending to your own
Despite our birth in communion
Come back to your roots
Depleted as they may be
Damped with despair
That selfless force
Accepting for all that you are
Underlies an affirming truth
Practice to be
The way of being
Create to find
Serve others
& love will engulf you
Catapulting for the better
Ricochetting impact
Extending from another to another to another to another........
*
The setting sun in the rearview mirror of a Sedan
Dashes onto the highway towards the airport
Full 90 miles per hour
Love tends to make people reckless
A father passes away and the sea of mourners part
Standing idle row by row
While reminiscent times elude the mind as the montage ensues
The widow and her son make way
The capsule of grief may never wither
But the memories embrace fondness back to their hearts
Love invokes grief to lessen from time to time
The birds chirp to each other in between the chestnut tree
Each branch extends towards them
Birds fly to each others nest
Bees buzz with joy
Nectar sweet
To be with their own
And to each their own
A love less scorned by the rays heat
As time progresses
Love can make life harmonious
To fear love is to fear yourself
And to fear yourself is to fear life
Lifeless flowers don’t bend towards the sun
Brittle and bent weary
Edged in doubt
They remain
Imprisoned by their frame
Dark & afraid
Extending from another to another to another to another........
BHCC Student Luleta Meharenna with her family at the 2024 Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Showcase on April 11, 2024.
BHCC Student Luleta Meharenna and English Professor Deborah Schwartz at the 2024 Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Showcase on April 11, 2024.
BHCC Student Luleta Meharenna with her family at the 2024 Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Showcase on April 11, 2024.