Coupeville brothers win big at poetry slam

Luke Carlson, 11, and his brother Gabe, 9, of Coupeville received prizes for participating in the Whidbey Island Arts Council Poetry Slam Wednesday evening at the Coupeville Library.

Luke Carlson, 11, and his brother Gabe, 9, of Coupeville received prizes for participating in the Whidbey Island Arts Council Poetry Slam Wednesday evening at the Coupeville Library.

The slam was hosted by Jim Freeman and attended by about 25 enthusiastic wordsmiths, who were challenged to create a poem using at least three words from a choice of 15, or all of them if they chose. Slammers had about 30 minutes to create a poem using words such as frazzled, tinseltown, rabbit, punch, labor pains, kite, lovely, roadhouse, scintillating, dodge, slippery, follicle, floral, blue and forgo.

Luke and Gabe are students at the Cedar School in Coupeville, where they have taken poetry classes.

Luke’s poem:

Dodge, the rabbit, was a funny rabbit. He loved to look at lovely kites.

His favorite one today was a blue box kite. The rabbit lived in Tinsel Town to forgo his frazzled father.

Gabe’s poem:

No Dodge! Don’t punch the tinsel town taxi!

Freeman hosts Whidbey Island Arts Council Poetry Slams each month on the island. This was the first one held at the new library in Coupeville, which happened to be designed by Luke and Gabe’s dad, Stig Carlson of Stig Carlson Architecture.