Friday, November 6, 2009 10:34 PM CST
Oakland student's poem on clowns a winner in state competition
By ROB STROUD, Staff Writer
rstroud@jg-tc.com
OAKLAND — Sinister clowns bare their sharp teeth, cackle shrilly, and grasp with clammy hands in Caitlyn Strader’s poem, “A Night of Fun.”
The 17-year-old senior put her fear of clowns into writing as part of an English assignment at Oakland High School.
“We were looking at different phobias and the students needed to write a poem that made the person reading the poem feel like he or she had that phobia,” said English teacher Lee Roll. “I think Caitlyn accomplished that. The poem was pretty creepy.“
Her creepy poem also accomplished a first place award amidst hundreds of other submissions in the 2008-09 Illinois Teachers of English Poetry Competition, co-sponsored by Illinois Poet Laureate Kevin Stein and Bradley University.
Strader’s work also was named a Poem of Special Merit, an award that recognizes winning poems that exhibit an appealing blend of craft and content.
“’A Night of Fun’ reminds us that although the imagined world may be enthralling it need not always be benevolent,” wrote Stein. “As if in dream becomes ’horrifying nightmare,’ the speaker experiences an ironic ’night of fun/at the circus’ harassed by a bevy of clowns.”
When her class was assigned to write about their phobias, Strader said she found chilling inspiration in a nightmare she once had. She said her biggest fear is going to a circus where “everything goes wrong.”
Here poem includes a passage in which, “Hair, striped green, yellow, blue, colored to make you laugh. The patterned outfit, to appear silly. Polka-dots, striped patches, flower buttons, hypnotize you, distracting you while he pounces.“
Roll said student poems written for assignments can be generic and vague, so the idea behind the phobia writing assignment is to create concrete, sensory details, “building a mind movie.“
Clowns proved to be a common thread in many of the phobia poems that the students wrote, Roll added.
Strader, who plans to attend Northwestern University and become a Navy surgeon, said she found writing the poem to be therapeutic, but still finds the finished product to be pretty creepy.
The high school senior said she has always had a fear of clowns and been especially frightened by the horror film versions, such as the supernatural clown in the televised version of Stephen King’s “It.“
Strader said she does not know the source of her fear of clowns, but added that her mother, Michelle, shares the same phobia.
“She does not like reading the poem,” Strader said.
Contact Rob Stroud at rstroud@jg-tc.com or 238-6861.
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