Poetry Prize Honors Teacher’s Mother

Hamden Hall parents Laura and Sam Hurwitz, along with their children and Laura’s father, John Krick, have established the Frances Somerville Krick Poetry Award, named in honor of Laura’s late mother. The annual $100 award was presented to sophomore winner Claire Kramer for Sidewalks and senior runner-up Brian Pacelli for Cut Roses during Hamden Hall’s Reading Day. This year the event was held on April 26.

“This prize struck us as the perfect legacy,” Laura said. “My mother was a gifted English teacher. She instilled in her children and grandchildren a love of reading and a reverence for the written word. As a college classmate of Sylvia Plath’s and a friend of Poet Laureate Donald Hall and his wife, Jane Kenyon, she appreciated intimately both the enduring universality and small, still voice particular to poetry.”