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Poets In New Mexico: How They Came To Be

By Ina Hunt


Poetry has been taken with a lot of seriousness despite lacking a poetic king for a long time in this state. There have been many efforts in nurturing poets in New Mexico. Most notably are efforts by an organization of high schools in forming the poetry out loud group, and the New Mexico Poetry Society. The former is a recitation competition for high school students while the later is a non-profit making organization charged with the responsibility of nurturing poetry.

The poetry society of this region was formed by Alice Briley in the late 60s and has done a good job ever since. This institution is a strong supporter of cultural welfare. It strongly stands by this value. It engages in educational and literary activities, and nothing else out of this bracket. Due to its commitment to being no-partisan, it does not support any religious, political or social view points. Its members are, therefore, banned from participating in political, social and religious campaigns on behalf of the group.

This society has produced a number of good poets. They include Jim Applegate, Jeanette Oestermeyer, Joe Shaffer, Lynn Baldwin and Ann Applegarth among others. This organization has lost many of its founders, but still runs its activities like it has always done. In modern times, there has been a partnership between the society and the Eastern New Mexico University. This partnership has resulted in the organization of poetry competitions for high school students.

The group developed the RGV chapter which has for all this time encouraged upcoming poets. It formed a strong partnership with the New Mexican University. The students reaped the benefits through lectures and advice on poetry. The university began imparting this knowledge into students admitted in poetry classes. This friendship bred scholarships for needy students at the state poetry society.

Poetry loud is another group composed of mainly teachers whose core function is organizing recitation competition. They normally prizes at both national and state levels. The group does this in all the states in the country. The main prizes are 200 dollars for the winner and 200 dollars for the second-placed. They also cater for all the transportation costs for the main winner. They also offer some money for the refurbishing of school libraries for both the first-place and second-place winners. National competitions carry about ten times the amount of prize given at the state level.

Among the most influential poets are Dana Levin, Pata Mora and D. H Lawrence who migrated from Britain. Their poems were well received by their readers in this state and the other parts of the world. These are among the first professional poets in this state.

These poets wrote about several issues as determined by happenings at the time. They addressed the troubles that came with industrialization, love, political revolutions and civilization among others as dictated by happenings at that time. They got a lot of recognition from all over the world.

Apart from their themes, the writing styles were also determined by the times when they wrote their works. The literary movements; romanticism, symbolism, naturalism and realism, were very crucial in determining their writing styles. Each of these movements had its own styles that arose from the needs at the time.




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