Two diverse artforms found a common forum last week when the Palmer Museum of Art sponsored its third annual poetry contest. The winners, University students enrolled in poetry classes, were assigned to write poems inspired by paintings in the museum.

The annual contest is a collaboration between the Palmer Museum and the English department. Its purpose is to get students to look at artwork and become more comfortable with it, said Dr. Charles Garoian, education director of the Palmer Museum.

Ten winning poems from nine poets were selected by a jury of English department faculty members.

This year the two grand prize winners were Michael Franklin (senior-English) and Heather Safir (senior-pre-law). Franklin won for "Portrait of a Lady," and Safir for "Stephen Smalley: Place De L'Academie."

Other winners in the contest were Daniel Kwon's (senior-pre-med) "Einstein's Bust and a Statuette of a Woman: Everyone Looks at Everyone," Lisa C. George's (junior-business administration) "Warwick Castle," Franklin's "Love Lingers," Susan Scerbo's "As One," Samantha Felix's (senior-English) "Knaresborough Castle," Kimberly Saline's (senior-English) "Fountain Garden with Figures," Richard Hausch's (senior-science) "Gabriel-Alexandre Decamps: Painting and Landscape with a Figure at a Stream and Approaching Figure on Horseback" and Mary Finnegan's (senior-political science) "Approaching Storm - Landscape with Windmills."

Franklin found the inspiration for "Portrait" in a painting of the same name by Michiel van Mierevelt, a Dutch artist. "There was so much dignity, she seemed to be saying 'I am nobility,' " he said.

Franklin has been writing poetry for about five years. He said he writes as a release. "It's pretty much a way of creating art for me," he explained.

Illene Raymond, an English faculty member who helped coordinate the reading, said, "I think (the reading) is wonderful."

The contest was started two years ago when Garoian called the department of poetry and asked if they would help sponsor a poetry writing competition.

"This contest gives students the opportunity to come into the museum as poets," Garoian said. "As poets, they can look at a painting and notice the poetic elements of that painting."

Winners received a membership in the Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art and a typeset poster of their poems, which are currently hanging beside the paintings that inspired them.

The grand prize winners had their poems published in the museum's calendar along with a photograph of the painting that inspired them.

The reading was partly funded by the Friends of the Palmer Museum of Art, Garoian said.