Molly Prep's Poetry on HART Buses
She's done it again. Huntington High School junior Molly Prep's poetry will once adorn HART buses after the teenager's work earned honors in the town's Poetry for the HART contest.
This marks the second consecutive year that Ms. Prep's poem was chosen to be displayed in the interior cabins of HART (Huntington Area Rapid Transit) buses along with an exclusive set of other works.
A panel of poets, local youth group leaders and members of the town's Public Art Advisory Committee served as contest judges. Ms. Prep's poem, "Connection," along with the other winning works, will be placed on 11x24" placards and fitted into HART bus advertising spaces. They will be displayed for at least one year.
Ms. Prep and other outstanding high school poets were honored during an awards reception at the Walt Whitman Birthplace Historic Site in Melville. She read her poem there along with other contest winners and local poets.
"I found out about the Poetry for the HART competition last year through my English teacher Ms. [Aimee] Antorino, who encouraged us to submit a poem," Ms. Prep said. "I sent in a poem titled 'Leap,' which ended up among the winning poems. This year I was encouraged to submit a new poem and was very surprised to hear that I'd been named a winner again."
This year, Ms. Prep is a student in Ms. Antorino's Advanced Placement Language & Composition class. She's co-editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, the high school student newspaper. She often attends meetings of Et Cetera, the school's literary magazine.
Winning honors in the Poetry from the HART contest two consecutive years is no easy chore, especially since judges evaluate entries on a "blind" basis and thus had no idea Ms. Prep was a previous honoree.
The teenager's poem is thought-provoking. "I like to write for fun and to organize my thoughts," Ms. Prep said. "This poem, a combination of the two, was sparked by the age of technology in which we live, and the near loss of personal connection between people, especially those my age."
Although she is only a junior, Ms. Prep has begun the college planning process. "I'm really not sure what career path I plan to take after graduating high school," she said. "I like a variety of different subjects and I do well in most of them. I find a great deal of joy in writing. Not just poetry, but stories and essays, too, and in photography, travel and learning about the psychology of people. So perhaps I'll try to find my niche in one of these areas. However, I love social studies, math, science, language and music as well, so who knows?"
"Connected"
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