Katy Wolff ’21 has won second place for poetry in this year’s Thornton Wilder Writing Competition for her poem “Meadow Mine” — the sixth consecutive time a Westover student has received a poetry award in the contest.

“Katy wrote the poem ‘Meadow Mine’ in the Croft of Poetry class last year,” said English teacher Tom Juvan. “It came out of one of my favorite exercises to do with students, a ‘mistranslation’ exercise in which they take a poem in a language they don’t know and then, being guided just by the sounds of the original, write a poem that emerges from those patterns and rhythms.”

Tom added, “Katy’s poem came from a German poem. I encourage students to not worry about what the words literally mean, but to listen to the sounds and thus images that they conjure up. Then they work with those raw materials to shape a poem. The poems the students end with are so often remarkable precisely because they are not starting with an idea but instead are ‘messing around with words,’ as the poet Christian Wiman puts it.”

Recalling the writing exercise, Katy said, “I took the poem that was written in German, sounded the words out, and wrote down what I thought it sounded like. I think it’s a unique concept and helped me to think more about sound, language, and the boundaries one can push in terms of syntax within a poem.” 

“Katy was such an inventive writer in the class,” Tom noted. “She was always trying out new voices and styles in her writing, and so never got stuck in any one particular form or style. Her poems ranged from the hauntingly evocative ‘Meadow Mine’ to a witty extended metaphor poem that compared door-to-door salesmen to actors.” 

“I get inspiration for my poetry from many places,” Katy explained. “Most often, I write about youth and my experiences with growing into myself and my adolescence in general. I also write poems about my friends — I consider these poems a sort of love letter to those in my life. I also enjoy writing about nature, as I think many poets do.”

“I’ve always been an avid writer,” Katy added, “beginning with short creative stories in elementary and middle school. However, it wasn’t until high school that I discovered a love for more advanced forms of writing, like playwriting — and, of course, poetry.”

“I owe a lot of that passion to Westover,” Katy said. “Most little kids write short stories, but Westover’s classes have helped me with both technical skill and also tenacity to keep writing, even when I feel like my work isn’t very good.”

Katy is particularly grateful to have taken Tom’s Craft of Poetry elective. “That class definitely cemented my passion for writing poetry,” she recalled. “I felt supported by my classmates and teacher, and I certainly learned a lot about the art itself.” 

“I believe that our students so frequently receive recognition for their poetry because they take the work of revision so seriously,” Tom explained. “Through in-class workshops and individual conferences, our student poets embrace the process with a willingness to keep pushing their poems further. As the poet Susan Rich writes, ‘Revision is the difference between the adequate poem and the excellent one.’”

“Words have a special place in my heart,” Katy said. “I find joy in both creating my own art in the form of writing and performing others’ written art on stage.”

Katy has been an active member of Westover’s Drama Program. She has performed a range of roles, including Helena in last fall’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as the emcee for a student-written musical revue entitled Now Us this winter, and as Molly Ralston in a student-directed production in April of Agatha Christie’s classic murder mystery, The Mousetrap.

According to the Thornton Wilder Writing Competition’s website, the contest — now in its 35th year — was established by the Friends of the Hamden Library to honor Wilder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and playwright who was also a long-time Hamden resident. The competition is open to all New Haven County public, private, and parochial high school students. Entries for the competition may be any work of fiction: short stories, poetry, scripts, one-act plays, or selections from longer works. For her second-place poetry award, Kathy received a prize of $300.

Throughout her time at Westover, Katy has received high honors with distinction every term. This fall, she will be attending Santa Clara University, where she plans to major in Communications.

“I’m hoping to become a talent agent after I finish college,” she said, adding, “Hopefully, I’ll still have some time to write on the side!”