Remember when we asked for your relationship-themed poems for Valentine's Day? We received 118 listener responses by the Jan. 29 deadline, which made for a busy weekend for our contest judge, Susan Porterfield.
Porterfield, a poet and Rockford University professor, selected six winners whom we're featuring this week during Morning Edition. Porterfield judged all entries without knowing the authors' names.
Our first winner is Ian Marshall of Rockford, who wrote "Haiku," a poem named after the traditional Japanese form of verse:
Of course I love you You have meant the world to me Netflix and chill now?
Porterfield says this apparently simple poem is heavy with meaning. She critiques it in the link below:
Each contest winner was invited to our studios to record a reading of their poem. We were, however, unable to contact today's winner. So we asked Porterfield to read "Haiku" by Ian Marshall:
We'll reveal the next winner tomorrow. Listen during Morning Edition at 6:44 and 8:44, and then come back here to read the text and listen to a podcast reading.