Third Grader Wins Poetry Writing Contest

A third grader from Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica won a poetry prize for a poem inspired by Santa Monica’s beaches.

The poem, “Seashells,” written by Lucinda Empson-Speiden was selected as the one of the 10 best poems by students in grades K to 3 by Creative Communication, the host of the contest.

“I was thinking about how beautiful the beach looked,” she told The Santa Monica Lookout. “I had written a poem on the sunset and I thought about this beautiful glowing shell. The first draft was when I scribbled it down, and it’s been embellished, and it’s so much better.”

Creativity runs the family, Epson-Speiden's parents made headlines when they converted an apartment building into a single-family home in 2010.

Empson-Speiden submitted the work for the summer contest when she was in second grade.

Thousands of students from the U.S. and Canada entered the youth-writing contest, which is then judged by published writers and/or educators for “literary merit, creativity and social significance,” according to contest organizers.

Click here to read the poem.