John F. Ross CVI student wins OSSTF Student Achievement Award
January 29, 2020
GUELPH, Ontario – A grade 11 student at John F. Ross Collegiate Vocational Institute has been named one of the winners of the OSSTF Student Achievement One Strong Woman award.
The OSSTF Student Achievement Award is a writing and creative arts competition, which is open to all public secondary students in Ontario. According to the OSSTF website, “The competition is meant to encourage the intellectual development of our students and an interest in our society.”
The theme of this year’s award was One Strong Woman/Un Femme Forte. Students entering the competition were to submit an entry about one strong woman in their life who has guided, inspired and encouraged them to move forward in life. Submissions could be a poem, short story, essay, drawing or painting, or a digital production.
Nine students in Ontario were announced as recipients of this award including Maria, a grade 11 student at John F. Ross CVI. Maria is an International student from Brazil and started studying at Ross in September 2019.
Maria is proudly feminist and sees her mother, Fabiana, as a role model for her life. Since being at Ross, she has explored the theme of gender and her writing is often a celebration of women.
As part of the competition, Maria submitted a poem that pays homage to her mother and celebrates her roots.
Maria will be awarded $1,000 for her poem at the OSSTF General Meeting in March, where a video showcasing her work will be screened.
Maria was kind enough to share her award-winning poem with the UGDSB community.
—
Fabiana
Early in the morning,
even earlier in her life,
The sun barely shining,
She’s already hawking
The words of her father.
Ink-stained fingertips,
dried lips;
a seven-year-old blossom
rooted in the dry sands
Of the Brazilian Sertão*
She is thirteen now.
Alone, a small speck of Sertão sand, in a big town,
Surrounded by mirrored buildings reflecting a life
Cold, hard – like crushed stone.
Reflecting back that everything she knows
Is gone.
Her nights a crumbling foundation of wet pillows.
The early morning sun dries her tears;
she rises strong from torn tissues.
At twenty-four
Things got sore
The coat of white
was an incomplete sentence
like word salad
On the pages of the newspapers, she once hawked
The vultures of death swirl like alphabet soup
MD – medical doctor – master of death
My Daddy…
A year went by
No time to cry
Not a single tear dropped
Drowning
Anchorless, Lost
in the endless patriarchal
Rough and dangerous sea
Of grief and the Brazilian bureaucracy.
And the paper she now hawks
Her medical degree
Thirty is coming.
With the seeds of hope and love rooted
A womb full of promise-
Blossoming earth mother
Nesting, Negotiating, Nurturing,
Embracing womanhood.
Celebrating the medical
The mystical
The matriarchal
She rises.
Friend and physician,
Sister and momma,
Woman — Human
From the sands of the dry scorching heat of the Brazilian Sertão
With the tiny slivers of her battered broken heart
She operates the walls of her fortress.
With salty tears,
She nourished the gardens
That surrounded her castle.
She is the rose and at times
The venomous snake
That lives underneath.
*Sertão: biome that is present in the northeast area of Brazil. It is very dry, hot, and arid. There, it is very difficult to plant or raise animals. It’s also one of the least developed areas in Brazil, in which people get very few opportunities in life. *
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