[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 105 (Wednesday, September 8, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1556]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     VERMONT RESIDENT WINS THE ROBERT PENN WARREN AWARD FOR POETRY

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                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, September 8, 2004

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to commend a 
Vermont resident, Harriet McGraw, known to her friends as Hatsie, for 
winning the Robert Penn Warren Award for poetry. Her poem, ``Neighbors 
in the North End,'' was selected as the best of 853 submissions in a 
competition which saw entrants from 252 poets from 42 states and 
foreign nations. The competition was sponsored by the New England 
Writers Conference.
  Hatsie McGraw lives in Windsor and works in nearby Springfield, where 
she is the librarian at the Park Street School. She represents part of 
what is best about our state: an ongoing creativity that is the 
hallmark of much in Vermont, a creativity which brings forth not just 
poetry but handbuilt furniture, innovative small businesses, and 
popular music. As just one instance of that creativity let me cite her 
husband Tom, a painter whose works in mixed media were recently 
exhibited in a show of his work, ``Elements of Diversion,'' at the New 
England Gallery.
  We in Vermont are proud of Hatsie McGraw, and of the countless 
thousands like her who move ever onward in search of new things to do, 
new heights to scale, new skills to put to use.

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