Kent Driscoll
Northern News Services

Pelly Bay (Jan 09/06) - Soon to be published poets are roaming the halls of Kugaardjuk school in Kugaaruk. The Poetry Institute of Canada asked for submissions from students all over the country. Six poems from the Kugaaruk youth will be published in the spring.

The anthology is called "The Cat's Whiskers" and readers will learn about everyday life in Kugaaruk, from the point of view of Grade 6 students.

After separating into small groups, the students drew ideas from a hat and cobbled their poems together as a group.

"They were so excited to know that their stories are going to be around for as long as people read books," said their teacher Heather Critchlow.

Critchlow started with the basics, reading the story of Fuzzy Wuzzy the bear to the class. "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear/Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair/Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, was he?"

She got a cheap laugh from the students with that classic, and they were off and running.

"I think they look at their reality differently. Even looking at snow, it is something you have to live with, but it is something in their lives. Same goes for fishing. It is something that is fun and it is something that they will have in common with the readers down south," said Critchlow.

Contest restrictions prevented any of the poems from being published in Nunavut News\North, but Rosalie Apsaktaun, Charlene Immingark and Fabien Peetooloot followed the old axiom of "publish or perish" and wrote "Hunting" exclusively for News/North readers.

The line, "but the fish are scared" means something different to each of the authors.

"They got scared when I walked by the ice," explained the literalist Apsaktaun.

"They're just shy," explained the equally shy Immingark. Out of all the hunting in the poem, she preferred chasing whales, because, "you go in a boat."

Peetooloot is the most experienced hunter of the three. He shot and helped to skin his own muskox.

"Different animals think differently. That's just the way they move around," explained Peetooloot.

He learned about poetic licence from his class work, especially when it comes to fish.

"I caught one really big one, it was almost to my waist," said Peetooloot.

All three students agreed, they like poetry better than stories.

Poems chosen for the anthology are "The Fishing Derby," "Winter," "Camping in Summer," "The Polar Bear," and "Blizzard Days."