Experiences in a student musical gave Amanda Robinson the inspiration for her poem “Production Week Blues”—this year’s winner of the John F. Whitcomb Memorial Poetry Award, sponsored by the Friends of the Harvard Public Library.

A junior at the Bromfield School, Amanda has been participating in theatrical events since middle school. She wrote the first draft of “Production Week Blues” as a Bromfield freshman and this year revisited and refined the poem to submit it for the Whitcomb Award. The poem reflects her experiences putting on a student musical and is written in a style similar to a sestina. This lyrical fixed form usually consists of six six-lined stanzas where the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and in the concluding tercet.

Amanda hopes to go on to college, majoring in creative writing. She lives on Littleton Road with her parents, Darcy and Phil, and two younger brothers, Matthew and Nicholas. The family includes goats Belle and Ivy, a dog named Trinity, and chickens Arnold and Kyla.

John F. Whitcomb, a doctor and part-time poet, was an active member of the Friends of the Harvard Public Library. His love of poetry and the Harvard Public Library led him to initiate amateur and professional poetry programs in town. His love of children and young adults expressed itself in many ways. In his honor, the Friends of the Harvard Public Library established a poetry competition in 2001 for juniors in high school. The prize for winning the competition is $500.