AILSA CHANG, HOST:
On a cold winter day, a young woman sat in her college dorm room. She was homesick and looking at a photograph that a friend had sent from home. About an hour later, she had written a poem about that feeling. And now, as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, that poem has won a prestigious award.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: The Academy of American Poets gives prizes to university and college students. I'd like you to meet one of them.
LAUREN CHUMBLEY: Hello. My name is Lauren Chumbley.
ULABY: Chumbley is 22 years old. She's a University of Alabama senior. She wanted her poem to express gratitude to her friend who sent the picture from back home in Louisiana.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CHUMBLEY: (Reading) Dear Stella, thank you for the pictures of birds you saw by the lake yesterday. Lately, I've been missing them. Not just the wonders you saw - egrets and herons and ibises - but the ones I see every day, Passer domesticus most of all, who even in Latin is mundane. Passer, deliciae meae puellae. Why do I miss what I have?
ULABY: So who is Stella?
CHUMBLEY: Stella is one of my friends. She really does send me pictures of birds (laughter).
ULABY: This college poet was influenced not just by her friend's picture but, she says, by the Roman poet Catullus, a poetry rock star of more than 2,000 years ago.
CHUMBLEY: He wrote beautiful love poetry and also very funny vulgar poetry.
ULABY: Lauren Chumbley, who studied Latin for six years, used the scientific name for the household sparrow in her poem, in part to elevate a simple bird. One lesson of poetry, she says, is not to take the ordinary for granted.
CHUMBLEY: Plus, if you enjoy, you know, a bird that you see all the time, then you're just pleased all the time (laughter).
ULABY: Writing a poem about a picture of birds is also a tiny form of resistance, she says, against the use of artificial intelligence now swamping college campuses. It takes a stand for an ancient form of human connection that binds her and her friend Stella and the Roman poet Catullus. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
