By Emily Sides

About 125 Rochelle Middle School students participated in a poetry presentation ceremony Friday with visiting poet and teaching artist Glenis Redmond.

Redmond worked with the students for two weeks earlier in the school year and returned for the publication of the poetry anthology and celebration of the student’s work. Each participating student also received a copy of the their poetry book ‘Bad and Beautiful: An Anthology of Poems by Rochelle Middle School.’

At the ceremony, two students from each grade read their poems aloud on stage, including seventh grade Mahoganee Williams who read her poem “Life is Bad for Us is All I Hear.”

“I do remember the time you became a poet,” Redmond said to the audience and specifically Williams. “Because I was right there when you became a poet.”