Emi Maeda ’25 Named Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate

Congratulations to Emi Maeda ’25, who has been named the 2024 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate (MCYPL). This is an incredible and historic achievement, as Emi will be representing the Montgomery County poetry community in the next year. Emi's writing and personality captivated everyone at the MCYPL Program including the final judge, Michelle Taransky, a creative writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “Maeda writes with a bravado that can whisper through firework booms. Her poems are bildungsroman that offer possibilities for old ideas about where knowledge comes from,” said Judge Taransky.

 

Emi’s work has appeared in the NY Seikatsu Newspaper, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Kenyon Young Writer's Anthology and more, and she is the first-place winner of the Charlotte Miller Poetry Contest. The National Youth Poet Laureate Program identifies, celebrates and honors teen poets who exhibit a commitment to not just artistic excellence but also civic engagement, youth leadership and social justice.

 

The following are two of Emi’s poems:

 

Instead of being honest, 

let’s go to the grocery store,

where you’ll ask me 

something, and I’ll shake my head. 

I’ll try to say something along the lines 

of salt and leaves. But lines end. 

And I’ll end up with a messy mouth.

It’ll be like I have your arms. You 

have mine. But we’re both not quite sure 

how to use them, So they’re dangling. 

Uselessly. And a little awkwardly.

Funny, right? I’ll laugh. You won’t.

Because I can’t explain the joke.

Forgive me. It’s my first time in this 

Country. My father, your son, was too busy 

for sixteen years. We’ll walk through 

the fruit aisle. Past the rambutans 

that look like the itch in my throat,

Past the persimmons that are the color 

of the first and only kimono I’ve ever worn. 

Do you ever see someone familiar 

but can’t remember their name? 

That’s what forgetting a language is like. Except

it’s your grandmother and you can’t remember

how to say I love you. I’ve written 

poems about you in words you’ll never 

understand. This is one. But still, we’ll leave 

the grocery store. Salt, leaves, and plums 

in hand. Dump them in a pot and wait 

for them to pickle ‘till they shrivel red and sharp. 

When they’re finally ready, we’ll eat 

those sour plums, smiling through the flavor.

 

 

feeling like I had done 

something profound, I went 

 

to heaven. there, the beetle

treats me to a cup of coffee, 

 

saying, my legs were cold. 

I look down 

 

at people filled in with the color gold. 

golden teeth, golden pores.

 

stick figures stacked out

of love, joy, and whatever

 

your mother wanted you to have. 

I know, I promise.

 

that there are people that must 

be hated, but I can admire

 

a human hand. and if you

move far enough, you’ll see.

 

this is a species kind enough

to bury their dead.