The contest and event were carried out by Historic Neighborhood’s Faculty Director, Claudine Moreau. This year’s contest was judged by Asheville poet Ivy Rozen, who has commitment to lifting up emerging writers brought thoughtful attention to each submission. Rozen, who has a new book forthcoming this summer titled, If I Love You, from Seed Bed Press, praised the depth, originality, and emotional resonance of the student work.

Winners

1st Place
Madelyn Fourie — “Bone to Bone”

2nd Place
Georgia Vaughn — “A Note On Dreaming”

3rd place
Addison Hobgood — “Grip”

Honorable Mentions
Lidia Briones — “Our Love, Unending”
Emma Briceno — “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Were Right”
Allena Boddie-Chapman — “The Unlost and Unfound”

Beyond recognizing outstanding poetry, the evening underscored the transformative power of the contest itself. Several of this year’s finalists had never publicly identified as poets before submitting their work, and for some, the April 28 reading marked the first time they had ever shared their writing aloud in front of an audience. Their willingness to step forward and be heard speaks to the welcoming, affirming space the Primavera Poetry Contest continues to create.

Now in its third year, the contest has become a vibrant tradition within the Historic Neighborhood, offering students a meaningful venue to explore creative expression and build community through poetry. With another successful year concluded, organizers look forward to continuing this celebration of student voices in the years ahead.

This year’s judge, Martin Mitchell, who works at the Library of Congress and former editor of Poetry Daily, praised Moreau’s work:

“The scale of Claudine R. Moreau’s “Demise of Pangaea” is huge,” he said. “We range from the granular ‘keyed-in code’ of our cells, to lovemaking and childbirth, all the way to the eventual extinction of our galaxy, with its ‘spiral-armed bones’ descending towards Earth. Moreau beautifully renders humanity’s physical and emotional ‘fossil record.’ A surprising and inventive work.”

Combining scientific insight with emotional resonance, “Demise of Pangaea” explores themes of deep time, personal transformation and the layered fossil record of human experience.

The Brockman-Campbell Book Award is one of North Carolina’s most prestigious poetry honors, recognizing outstanding book-length poetry collections by North Carolina state residents.

“Demise of Pangaea” is available through

The festival opened with remarks from Historic Neighborhood Faculty Director Claudine Moreau, who introduced this year’s contest judge, Elon alum Alexandra Schneider ’23. Schneider set the tone for the evening with a powerful reading of her original poem, “Vampire in the Shangri-La Hotel,” which captivated the audience.

Following the featured reading, the event transitioned into an open mic session, where students shared original poetry and music. The celebration highlighted the thriving poetry culture within the Elon community.

In addition to the readings, attendees enjoyed an open coffee bar and surprise raffle prizes, creating an energetic and inclusive environment that

encouraged both creative expression and community connection.

The Primavera Poetry Festival continues to grow as a signature event for Historic Neighborhood, celebrating the voices, talents, and passions of Elon students through poetry, performance, and shared experience.

This year’s poetry contest drew over 85 poem submissions from

students across campus. Schneider selected the following winners:

First Place: “Sapphic Ghazal” by MacKenzie Smith
Second Place: “This Is Just My Love” by Lola Moore
Third Place:“A Letter to the Long Building” by Allena Boddie-Chapman

Honorable mentions:
“Untitled Love Poem” by Finn Wilkinson
“A Baby in the City” by Georgia Vaughn
“Not Me” by LoRell McLean

Moreau’s poem “The Atheist” won first place in the Carol Bessent Hayman Poetry of Love Award, honoring exceptional poetry about the theme of love, and earning her a $100 prize. Her piece “Lament of the Lunar Eclipse in Research Triangle Park” earned second place in the Poetry of Courage Award, which highlights works reflecting courage or crisis, along with a $50 prize. Additionally, her poem “Break the Hen” was named one of four finalists in the prestigious Poet Laureate Award category.

In recognition of her achievements, Moreau has been invited to present all three of her award-winning poems at the NCPS Sam Ragan Awards Day at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities on May 10, 2025. Her first and second place poems will also be published in the annual “Pinesong” awards journal, a distinguished collection celebrating the best poetry from the NCPS contests.

Historic Neighborhood Faculty Director, Claudine Moreau, collaborated with the Elon Astronomy Club to host the late-night viewing party, complete with hot cocoa and Moon Pies—a playful nod to the moon’s temporary plunge into darkness on “Pi Day.” Sarah Ann Chapman, associate director of Residence Life for residential education and community development, also joined the moon-gazing festivities, handing out cocoa to attendees.

The Astronomy Club showcased an array of telescopes, offering attendees the chance to observe the eclipse up close and capture their own images through the eyepiece. Adding to the scientific intrigue, Tim Martin, an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, set up advanced telescope-imaging systems—part of a decade-long project aimed at meticulously photographing lunar eclipses that outline Earth’s full umbral shadow.

The crowd settled onto blankets and adirondack chairs on the grass, buzzing with anticipation as the moon entered totality at 2:26 a.m.. During this phase, the moon adopted a striking dark red hue—a result of Rayleigh scattering, where shorter wavelengths of sunlight scatter in Earth’s atmosphere, allowing only the longer, red wavelengths to bend around the planet and illuminate the lunar surface.

For those who missed this awe-inspiring event, the next total lunar eclipse visible from Elon is already on the horizon, March 2026, but the eclipse will only be visible for a short time at moon set.

Armed with new knowledge, students set off to explore the campus grounds in front of the Carlton building, scouring the area for different types of mushrooms. After a short search, they reconvened to display their finds. Izzo organized the collection by appearance and color, explaining the important ecological roles mushrooms play in their habitats.

To keep the adventure going, Izzo encouraged students to widen their search perimeter and use the iNaturalist app to document their finds. The second round of mushroom discoveries popped with a vibrant array of colors — thanks to the recent rainfall that boosted the fungal growth on campus.

It was a fun and educational experience, leaving students with a deeper appreciation for the hidden world of fungi thriving around them. Historic Neighborhood plans to make this event an annual fall tradition.

Claudine Moreau, a lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and faculty director of Historic Neighborhood, was featured live on Asheville’s 103.3 FM show “Wordplay” on Sunday, Sept. 23, 2024. is a weekly radio show where poets and writers of creative prose share their work and engage in discussions about their craft and creative processes with hosts Jeff Davis and Lockie Hart.

This week’s episode spotlighted two women poets working in STEM fields. Moreau read from her poetry collection “ and Britt Kaufmann, who teaches math, presented selections from her collection “” The show offered a fascinating conversation on the intersection of math, physics, and poetry.

You can listen to the recording of Moreau and Kaufmann’s insightful and lively discussion

As part of the recognition, she has been invited to present her poem at the upcoming North Carolina Poetry Society meeting. The event will take place on September 14, 2024, at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, North Carolina.

Published by the Charlotte-based in April 2024, Moreau’s book seamlessly merges themes of astronomy, physics and geology into stunning and often stark tapestries of verse. The collection was praised by , founder and editor of

“In the collection, the fragile humans are like continents pulled apart by the gravity of their appetites and circumstances. Claudine Moreau negotiates her orbit around and through her life’s collisions and mergers with a mixture of wonder and hard-won truth in rhythmic sentences that oscillate as they sing us forward. Her lines reverberate with scientific themes that ebb and flow like the tides, folding their edges into the reader’s taut subconscious, foaming with quiet surprises over and over.”

Moreau is set to share her cosmos-inspired poems with audiences across the state in the coming year with readings scheduled at bookstores and various venues.

Hosted by Historic Faculty Director Claudine Moreau and Faculty in Residence Kevin Otos the festival kicked off with a warm welcome from Living Learning Assistant Kendall Somol. Moreau, also a lecturer in the Physics Department, unveiled her first full-length poetry book titled, “” a collection of science-inspired verses published by Main Street Rag Publications. She then introduced alumnus Lane Fields ’11, whose poetic journey was nurtured during his time at the university by mentors Kevin Boyle, a retired Elon English professor, and Moreau who saw the poetic supernova flaring in Lane’s center.

Fields, now a distinguished poet in his own right, graced the audience with readings from his poignant and introspective work–intensely personal, vulnerable, visceral. These were narrative works of longing and ultimately of love of oneself.

Serving as the judge for the Primavera Poetry Contest, Fields bestowed accolades upon the winners: Anabelle Sumera-Decorat for “Fanfic” (1st place), Grady Cooke for “Cataclysmic Gimmicks” (2nd place), and Claire Lancaster for “A Broken Curtal Sonnet 51±ŹÁÏÍű Eye Cream” (3rd place). Honorable mentions were awarded to Megan Duckworth for “Body Dysmorphia,” and Carissa Pallander for “Abecedarian about a 20-year-old virgin kiss” and “with the lights off.”

The penultimate reading of the night was the invited guest poet Dr. Patrick Bizzaro, who retired as a full professor from Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s doctoral program in Composition and TESOL and is at work on a new a novel, Draft Dodging in the Sixties, which takes place in Bethel, NY in 1969 during the cleanup of Max Yasgur’s farm after the Woodstock concert. (Bizzaro attended Woodstock, y’all!) Bizzaro, Moreau’s original poetry mentor, read from “Fog at the Manassas Battlefield,” accompanied by striking photography from his wife Resa Crane Bizzaro. Dr. Bizzaro’s work begs us to ask, “Who owns history?”

Through the prism of poetry, the festival illuminated the vibrant creative spirit thriving on campus–between the walls of engineering and physics to theatre to sociology to English– and underscored the transformative power of mentorship in nurturing aspiring writers across disciplines.