ROCK HILL, S.C. — You might have noticed haiku poems around downtown Rock Hill.
Last year, we told you about the Women’s Art Initiative holding a haiku poetry contest.
Well, it’s doing it again this year.
Around 50 students submitted haiku poems from three different high schools – Rock Hill High School, South Pointe and Northwestern.
Haikus are short form poetry that consists of 3 lines in a 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable pattern.
Judges from the Women’s Art Initiative selected 17 winners earlier this year.
Recently the students used stencils of their poems to spray paint onto the ground around downtown Rock Hill alleyways and walkways.
The Rock Hill Poet Laureate also stopped by to assist and encourage.
One Rock Hill High School senior says her haiku is about butterflies, starting as cocoons and sprouting into something beautiful.
“Even from hard times and everything challenging you’ve been through, you can grow into something absolutely beautiful from it,” said Alley Pridmore. “It’s just a positive thing for everybody to go out there and see. Because of the media and COVID and everything else going on, I just feel it’s so uplifting for everyone to just see something positive for once.”
“Anyone can do anything and that there’s beauty in everything around us and the differences in our community,” said Alexandra Waterhouse, Rock Hill High junior. “Because we do have a very vast community, very varied. So seeing all the different students and people who have written, talking about so many different things that they find beautiful in the community, I really think it reiterates and solidifies the fact that our community is so varied and that’s what really makes it so wonderful.”
Waterhouse was also a winner who loves to write. Her Haiku is about rain, something she says doesn’t have to be negative.
For her, rain is refreshing, feeds the earth and flowers and brings peace and serenity.
