December 2011

The Diploemat—3

SENIOR POETs LAUREATE HONOR SCROLL WINNER DIES

News reached us too late to include in the September edition of The Diploemat that long-time Senior Poets Laureate competition supporter Annetta Talbot Beauchamp, member of the Poets’ Roundtable of Arkansas, passed away at age 82 in Helena, Arkansas. Annetta’s poem “Ghosts of Settler Women” won the 2010 Honor Scroll Award. This link will take you to her page in the 2010 edition of GOLDEN WORDS Anthology. Here

We received notification of Annetta’s death through this e-mail from Arkansas poet Jim Barton, another past winner in our Senior Poets Laureate—and many other—contests:

Monday, September 5, 2011--Poets, I received an e-mail from Betty (Heidelberg) via Harding Stedler that our state Poetry Historian and good friend, Annetta Beauchamp passed away early Sunday morning. She was a true poet at heart. Her poetry was wonderful, as evidenced by her many awards and honors.

One of my most cherished memories of her will always be the first time I met her at a Spring Luncheon and shared the table with her for lunch. She was living history, telling me of how Helena grew and developed as a river town, how the steamboats would stop there to deliver and pick up freight and passengers, how the whole area was an inspiration for both history and poetry.

She will be missed greatly by all who knew her well, and by those of us who met her late in her life.

Songbird (in loving memory of Ms Annetta Beauchamp) A songbird has been silenced, but just for a time; the soft breezes blow, and bring us her rhyme. The trees hush their rustle from branch and from crown, the flowers are muted outside of town. The river has paused for a moment, in love, awaiting that songbird to sing from above.

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