J-W Teen Advisory Board

We want you (and your ideas … and your photos)

The Journal-World Teen Advisory Board has a lot cooking to kick off going back to school, and we hope you’ll get involved, too:

Teen fashion forum

Students entering fifth through 12th grades can join the board as we sort through what’s in style for fall. Bring your Seventeen and your Alloy catalog, and we’ll interview you about what’s cool and what’s a tad too trashy.

The fashion forum will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 7 at the News Center, 645 N.H. Call Christy Little at 832-6361 if you would like to attend. Feel free to bring your friends.

Teen advisory board meetings

The teen advisory board meets this fall at 7 p.m. Mondays (usually the third Monday of the month). You must be entering fifth grade to join the board. We’re looking for story ideas, writers and photographers. Call Christy Little at 832-6361 or Steve Rottinghaus at 832-7254 if you’d like to attend. The next meeting is Aug. 18.

Tell us about your vacation

Send us a photo of what you did this summer — whether you were sunning on the beach or hanging out with friends at home — and include a short description of what you were doing. You’ll need to identify everybody in the photo with you, include your name, phone number, school and grade, and a return mailing address if you want your photo back. Photos can be submitted to teens@ljworld.com or dropped off/mailed to The News Center, 645 N.H., 66044, Attn: 18 & Under. Photos are due by Aug. 1 and will be published in an upcoming 18 & Under page.

Reader submissions

Get your poem published

Send in your original poetry to teens@ljworld.com. Don’t forget to include your name, phone number, school and grade.

Lawrence High School students in Joy Clumsky’s creative writing class were challenged to select a work of art that “spoke to them” on an imaginative/emotional level and to interpret that art via free verse or rhymed poetry.

The following poems are from students in Clumsky’s class:

Timeless Love

A brisk wind whisks its way

Through branches, heavy laden.

Many remarkable years adjoin,

And a journey is almost complete.

Without a spoken word,

Both know the thoughts

That twirl about their minds,

Like, as a young girl,

How she’d twirl her rich, dark hair

About her finger.

Their lives are vines,

Intertwined after decades

Of maturity and care.

— By Katie Bates, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s “Public Garden at Arles”

Left Alone

Why did you desert me?

Could I not offer you enough?

You left without a note, a goodbye;

You left without thinking of me.

You forgot to see through my eyes

What you always made me see:

The superior in life, the exhilaration,

All the right from wrongs.

When you swallowed those pills,

You swallowed all hope,

Leaving me as dead as you.

was I in your eyes

When the light began to fade?

Did I grow smaller

And smaller

Into absolutely nothing?

Did you struggle to say goodbye,

When it was late, much too late?

— By Kristin Potter, inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s “At Eternity’s Gate”