Poems that high school students Da'Mesha Powell and Jeremie Merriweather wrote more than a year ago won first-place awards Feb. 22 in a Black History Poetry Contest.

"There were two first-place winners because the poems were so good the judges couldn't choose between them," said Karen Blaker, the young adult and reference librarian at the Main Library in Augusta.

The contest, sponsored by the Richmond County Public Library and the Augusta Authors Club, was open to all Richmond County high school students, Mrs. Blaker said. The poems could include rap lyrics and had to be between three and 25 lines long.

Published poets who are members of the authors club judged the contest.

"I wrote the poem in eighth grade for an assignment to write a book of poems. That was my favorite one," Jeremie, 17, said of his poem Memphis, My Hometown. In the poem, Jeremie talks about the Tennessee city he moved away from at the age of 5 but visits every summer. He refers to Memphis as the "birthplace of the down-home blues" and describes the look of the neighborhoods, the people, cars and restaurants.

"I was just missing Memphis," the T.W. Josey High School junior said of his poem. "I felt that I wanted to let everybody know where I came from and how it is."

In Da'Mesha's poem, Who Am I, she talks about being "the black woman and proud of it ... you should be serving me on a diamond encrusted silver platter and not expect me to serve as my ancestors did." The Academy of Richmond County junior said she wrote the poem in February 2005 after not seeing many Black History Month activities at school.

"In school, we never really acknowledge it. We might watch one film, and if we do, it's about black men, but you have a lot of black women who've done things too, so I figured I'd write a poem on a young black woman," she said.

About two dozen students and their families and friends attended the event.

Two of the students who won awards for their poems, Mark Coburn and Shontae Wright, are students at Bungalow Road Alternative School. The school's principal, Wayne Frazier, said he was proud of their accomplishment.

"I wasn't surprised they won because of what I knew about the students beforehand," he said. "Even though the children all made some kind of bad choice, people think they're just bad, but we have some children over there who are very talented."

Other students who received awards in the contest were Rasheema Ellis, of Westside High; MarPhillia Carrington, of John S. Davidson Fine Arts; Douglas Samuels, of Glenn Hills; and Jawan Bailey and Jalissa Smalls, of T.W. Josey.

Reach C. Samantha McKevie at (706) 823-3552 or samantha.mckevie@augustachronicle.com.