Neighbor’s garden inspires young poet to national award
Maura Reilly-Ulmanek, 17, enjoys taking care of her friend and neighbor Esther Hurlburt’s garden when she is away. But she never expected it to help her win a trip to New York City and a gold medal in the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.
The Given Avenue garden is small but elaborate. There is a well-tended mixture of flowering and edible plants, a small koi pond and sculpture. “It’s just a really lovely place to be,” Maura said.
The little garden became a big inspiration for the young poet, who this fall will be a senior at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School.
Maura’s poem, esther’s garden, was one of five she entered as a poetry portfolio in Scholastic’s annual competition. She was one of 32 students from Kentucky to win 41 medals — 15 gold, 23 silver and three special awards — in several categories of writing and visual arts. Maura was the state’s only gold medal winner in poetry.
“I think the poem basically is about spirituality and the similarities between religion and spirituality,” Maura said. “It’s hard to ignore how spiritual nature is, and I think just being surrounded by that much life in a garden is touching.”
Hurlburt didn’t see the poem until it was published in Lafayette’s student literary magazine, The Laurel.
“When I read that poem, I was brought to tears,” said Hurlburt, 56, a nurse and Unitarian Universalist minister. “I think she captured God in nature to perfection. I couldn’t have captured that or described it in the way she did in that poem.”
The gold medal included an invitation to attend the awards ceremony last month at Carnegie Hall in New York, where the keynote speaker was Meryl Streep.
“She was just so humble,” Maura said of the acclaimed actress. “It was really nice to hear people who have made it as artists and still feel insecure about their art. She was just so honest; that was my favorite part.”
After the ceremony, there were workshops and presentations for Scholastic winners at Parsons The New School for Design. She also visited relatives in Brooklyn as several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Maura made college visits to two “dream schools,” Columbia and Yale, during the six-day trip. She also is considering the University of Chicago, Centre College and Transylvania University, where last summer she participated in the Governor’s School for the Arts.
Maura traveled with Rebecca Powell, a close family friend. Her mother, Siobain Reilly, a Montessori teacher, and step-father, Darrell Wiggett, who works with computers, stayed home with Maura’s sisters, 6 and 1.
In addition to writing, Maura likes photography and has a small business making portraits for other high school students. She donated her services to shoot brochure pictures for Legacy Home Ministry, a non-profit organization Hurburt founded that provides housing for elderly women of limited means.
Maura is considering careers in museum curation and journalism. She has loved writing stories for “as long as I can remember,” but has focused on poetry since entering SCAPA as a freshman.
“I like the way words fit together,” she said. “I think I was always intimidated by poems because you have only so many words to express what you’re trying to say. Eventually, I started to enjoy the challenge, because every single word is important.”
Hurlburt thinks her young neighbor will continue to impress others, as she has impressed her. “She’s a cool, sophisticated thinking young woman with immense talent,” she said.
Here are Maura Reilly-Ulmanek’s winning poems:
esther’s garden
i wish you could have seen
mother teresa holding hands
with Him for the first time
their soft fingertips
tasting of lavender
and lemongrass
i’ve tried to tell father daniel
that esther’s rain-glazed benches
are as good as any pews
and i’d like to feel moss and
soil under my knees
when i stoop to pray
you’d think she’s trying
to teach all things to speak
in latin greek and love
can’t the black-eyed susans
say amen?
let the junebugs
baptize us with rain water
we’ll whisper our confessions
to the steady koi
the cicadas hum
the sweetest sermons
you’ll ever hear
listen they’ll coax
the hallelujah
from your lips
i don’t know much about the bible
but you can’t tell me
that He hasn’t written His will
in spiderwebs and slug trails
that we weren’t each born
with a little eden in our bones
teaching us to dance
to the holy murmur
of what is here
hope & dust
this is a poem for anyone
who has ever felt lost
and that is to say
this poem is for you
a stranger once told me
we all feel made of dust sometimes
and i know this to be true
but sister brother silent friend
dust is sometimes beautiful
the way it collects on windowsills
and carries through the air
just as you are beautiful
in the way you wear short sleeves
even with your scars
and the way you hold hope
so awkwardly in your palms
salsa
our kitchen is
paul newman’s vinaigrette
such a sweet saucy smile
plastered to cans
mason jars
and movie screens
we watch him waltz
across the counter
with elvis presley
and he is the queen
as they share a smoke
ignore the jealous glances
from chef boyardee
marilyn monroe is holding
a black umbrella
above them
as they slide towards
the sink
because she is tired
of assuming the same roles
the same compromising positions
she wants it to be love
frail bones
i think i’m
beginning to realize
how afraid you are
of being more
than hips and breasts
and the gap between your thighsi saw your hand slip
while you were cutting
and i saw the look on your face too
realizing that there is only
soft tilapia flesh and
plum patterned blood vessels
separating you from each of your
two hundred and six lovely bonesyou fear them each equally
because it would be such a shame
to realize that even one
inch of you isn’t perfect
and i don’t know that you
would see the beauty
in your mango pulp organs
the pink flesh that puckers
a redblue bundle of nervesi wondered once
what facts were stitched
into the fabric of our skins
if our palms and ankles
and birthmarks
could betray us as brutally
as our wordsi wanted to ask you
if you thought skeletons
were ever ugly
Dear Mona
I love the poem you wrote
and I’m sorry you felt
like it didn’t belong to you.
You should know
that it ended up stuck
to the postman’s boot
and he took it home
and gave it to his wife.
She decided to give
him another chance, Mona.
And this is part of the reason
that I’m writing to remind you
to be gentle with yourself.
I’m sorry that your boyfriend
has stopped holding your hand
in the grocery store and that
your father doesn’t remember his name
or why you don’t make casseroles
like your mother.
Please remember
that my offer still stands.
The tulips and I
are in agreement
that you are destined
for far greater things.
Love, always
Sam
