Lawrence High School students can rhyme any time

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Seven Lawrence High School students — seniors Stanley Faynblut, Eden Kataev, Nayalise Montilla and Barbara Williams and juniors Ethan Breban, Stacy Portillo and Susan Sedhom — were awarded honorable mention certificates for “outstanding poems that were not awarded cash prizes” in the 2017 Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area’s Martin J. Kelly Writing Contest.

The competition is open to all public and private high school students in Nassau County. It attracted 503 entries this year, third most in the history of the competition. Prizes of $50 were be awarded to the writers of the best 50 quatrains.

This year’s contest asked students to write poems that conformed to the syllabic structure and rhyme scheme of the Gaelic Quatrain. Judges considered conformity to the structure of the quatrain, the elegance of the language, and the skillfulness of the rhymes. The best entries were poems said much in a compressed and economical form.