Express Yourself Youth Poetry Competition

Some Dallas Foundation grants make life better for young people by funding after-school programs or high quality childcare. But one grant helps the community better understand its young people. That’s the annual award from the Joe M. Dealey Sr. and Doris Russell Dealey Fund that underwrites the citywide Express Yourself! youth poetry competition.  

The event started as a tribute to the late civic leader and business executive Joe M. Dealey, Sr., who died in 1995. A former chairman and CEO of A.H. Belo Corp., Mr. Dealey also had served as president of Belo’s flagship paper, The Dallas Morning News, for two decades. He also spent several years as chairman of The Dallas Foundation.  

His family decided that the newspaperman’s legacy needed to somehow include writing. When a former library director suggested a poetry competition for children, Mr. Dealey’s widow and children felt they’d found a fitting tribute. The family added Doris Russell Dealey’s name to the fund after she died in 2005.  

“This contest focuses attention on an almost forgotten segment of the student population,” said Joe M. Dealey, Jr. “Not those who excel in athletics or academics, but in creativity.”  

Nobody knew how popular the Express Yourself! competition would turn out to be. The contest includes poetry workshops at schools and libraries throughout the fall and winter. Then the entries — more than 1,000 each year — stream in. Volunteer judges sift through poems and name several winners in each grade category.  

In 2010, the library added another challenge: a chance to design cover art for the anthology. The cover art competition attracted more than 300 entries in 2011.  

“This is just one of a few systemwide programs our libraries do each year,” Ms. Giudice said. “It gives us a chance to promote writing, as opposed to reading, which is our normal routine.”  

And for participants, it’s a chance to be heard and taken seriously — a critical need for young people finding their place in the world. 

“It was great,” said Laura Longwell, who won the competition’s grand prize in 1997 and 1998, when she was a high school student at the Episcopal School of Dallas. 

Now married, and a graduate of Barnard College in New York, Ms. Longwell returned to Dallas to help announce winners at the 2011 Express Yourself! awards ceremony.  

“In high school, writing poetry was like breathing,” she recalled. “Being recognized in that way was a wonderful thing.”