Award-Winning Bryn Mawr Poet's Work Featured On Academy Of American Poets Website

Bryn Mawr College awards the Academy of American Poets Prize to one undergrad student each year, and the 2016 winner's work was so powerful the Academy itself shared the student's award-winning poem.

Natalie Kawam, class of 2019, won the college's 2016 Academy of American Poets Prize and the academy is hosting her poem, "The Pulse," on its website now.

The poem is haunting and uses powerful language to evoke visceral emotions in its audience.

Kawam told the college she went from hating poetry in high school to learning to hone her skills while taking an introductory poetry class at the college.

While Kawam plans to earn a degree in psychology, she said she'll be keeping poetry in her life.

"For me, psychology is more of the scientific side of things. But on the other hand, it’s the study of the mind, and I think poetry has a lot to do with how in touch you are with the experience that you’re writing about,” she told the college. “So I think the study of both poetry and psych at the same time really marries the two, and kind of goes to show how the study of the mind can be very diverse.”

You can read Kawam's award-winning poem online here.

The Academy of American Poets was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry.

The University and College Poetry Prize program began with ten schools in 1955. The Academy of American Poets now sponsors over 200 annual prizes for poetry at U.S. colleges and universities, and has awarded cash prizes to nearly ten thousand student poets since the program’s inception.

The Bryn Mawr College prize was founded in 1957 by Mrs. Peter McCormick in memory of Marie Bullock.

Image via Bryn Mawr College