February 2008
Poetic Surprise
by Phaedra Greenwood
Imagine how surprised you’d be if someone called to tell you that you had just won a trip to England in a contest that you didn’t even know you had entered. That’s what happened to Holly Mell, a senior at Taos High School, when she wrote a two-page essay about the poetry of D.H. Lawrence for a school assignment given to her by her Advanced Placement English teacher, Nancy Jenkins.
Mell says she picked Lawrence’s "Pomegranate" because it had the most depth, and the most to work with. "It’s a cryptic poem and I didn’t understand it at first. Lawrence was fighting against society and the repression of emotion. The fissure reminds me of the Rio Grande Gorge. Lawrence took pictures of the Gorge and wrote a lot of poetry about the birds and beasts during his stay here in Taos," she says. "His nature poetry is some of his best stuff."
Mell’s essay was one of the top four published in a student literary magazine, UNM-Taos Howl, Vol. 2, Issue 1. In her essay Mell wrote, "In the poem ‘Pomegranate,’ D.H. Lawrence uses sexual imagery to explore the deeper fears in the human psyche… The fissure cracks open the pomegranate to bring life. The fissure cracks open the heart to feel emotion… Suffering is what defines human beings. The crucifixion must happen before there can be a resurrection. The heart must be broken to experience true passion in life."
Jenkins sent 40 essays, including Mell’s, to the D.H. Lawrence Essay Contest which was held in conjunction with the D.H. Lawrence Festival in Taos in October of 2006. The festival was sponsored by the Friends of D.H. Lawrence in partnership with Taos High School. The prize was a two-week trip to England to participate in a D.H. Lawrence Conference in the author’s home territory of Nottingham/Eastwood, the coal mining communities where Lawrence was born and raised.
Mell flew over by herself. "I was the youngest person there," she says. "Everyone else was about fifty and up. Many of them were Lawrence scholars giving their thesis papers. I read Lawrence’s poem and my two-page essay."
She was impressed by the gathering of D.H. Lawrence fans from all over the world, especially Asia, where he is still widely read. She also enjoyed meeting Ken Russell, the director of "Women in Love." After seeing the film, Mell remarked to Russell that she had some trouble understanding the accents. Russell said, "That’s English, darling, not American!"
"It was a great experience," Mell says. "England is beautiful. The people were my favorite part. I think I was able to talk to everyone and be friendly with older people because of my church experience of being around large groups of people." Her father is the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Taos, and her mother is Carol Mell, a freelance writer.
Holly Mell came home to Taos with a new respect for the literature of D.H. Lawrence. "I learned from this trip how incredible Lawrence really was and how many people he touched all over the world."
Photo: Holly Mell, left, and director Ken Russell after a screening of "Women in Love."
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