In poems, children and teenagers find a voice for feelings they would otherwise struggle to express. In writing that comes from the heart, they share what the world means to them.

Anything can inspire the works, from a favorite family vehicle to the way generations fail to communicate.

Samantha Thee, an 18-year-old Kahuku High & Intermediate School senior, recently wrote about an eating disorder:

Her outer shell,

Top Model approved.

The light inside,

Extinguished.

"When you write poetry, you're the keeper of your own ideas," Thee said. "It allows you to leave some inferred feelings. The words have to convey more than one emotion. That's why poetry is so powerful."

Since 2000, honesty like that has fueled the Windward Community College/Starbucks Star Poets contest, a statewide competition open to youths in grades 3 to 12. This year, more than 4,500 poems were entered, including Thee's poem, "Her Outer Shell."

The poem, which received an honorable mention status, was one of eight from the La'ie school selected for recognition.

The top poets for each grade will read their works during a celebration of the contest Sunday at the college's Paliku Theatre.

Poetry inspires students in ways that essays and fiction are unable to do, said WCC journalism professor Libby Young, who has been a contest organizer and judge since it began.

"Poetry is a more expressive way of talking about feelings and issues that are important to young people," she said. "It's more free-flowing. It encourages them to express private feelings that wouldn't ordinarily come out in a regular classroom essay assignment."

In its first year, the contest attracted only 300 entries but quickly grew in popularity, Young said. Starbucks annually provides prize money — $50 per child with an additional $150 going that child's school — as well as publishing costs for 15,000 copies of a journal of the top entries.

Through the years, parents have told Young that the experience was one of the biggest moment's in their child's life. It seems especially poignant in the lives of children unaccustomed to the limelight because they are more into writing than academics or sports, she said.

But the experience of hearing poems read also moves parents. At a public reading in 2004 at Kahala Mall, a seventh-grade boy read a poem about standing beside his father while they looked in a mirror. He called it "Giraffe Love." His father watched from the far edge of the audience.

"That poor dad was crying," Young said. "His son had expressed this deep feeling for him that he probably never heard."

The students do not pull their punches. No topics are off-limits.

"We get a fair amount of poems with pain in them," she said. "These are real issues for kids. They are not issues they wear on their sleeves, but when they get a chance to write about them, it comes through."

At Kahuku, the students in Pamela Palmer's English and literature classes have consistently won. They're always surprised when judges like their poetry, but there's a simple reason for that, Palmer said.

"It's the real them, the honest detail of their life," she said. "They have the emotion in their lives. I totally harp on them to communicate the universal through the specific."

One of the winners this year was Shanlie Kaululaau, an 18-year-old Kahuku senior who said she "feels bad" that her poem, "A Single Rose," was selected.

"I don't really write poetry," she said. "I just did it as an assignment."

But Kaululaau, who works on the school newspaper, liked the freedom it gave her writing. She could share the moment of receiving a rose in a totally different way than she could in an essay:

I see you there, holding

A single rose.

Disappointment rises

from some deep abyss.

"It was a dramatic experience for me," she said. "I couldn't write it in an essay. Poetry allowed me to express my deep feelings."

This year's entries included a first for the Star Poets contest: A poem in braille.

Cricket Bidleman, a 9-year-old Big Island girl who is educated at home and Waimea Elementary, won with her poem "Ode to an Old Land Cruiser."

"I never knew I would make it," she said. "Really. Not even a little bit."

Adopted in China at age 4, Cricket, who is blind, learned English in the first month with her new parents, Cliff and Sally Bidleman. She learned to use Braille five years ago when the family lived on Lana'i. She can touch-type on a computer and also knows Morse code.

The 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser in Cricket's poem was practically a family member, the child said. It had more than 280,000 miles on it when it stopped running.

"Well, it was a really old car and our whole family misses it a lot," Cricket said by telephone from the Big Island. "I thought it would be a nice subject to write about and there were a lot of fun stories about it that I remember."

If Dad stopped suddenly or turned the car

Left or right, water would slosh loudly

Inside the driver's door.

And we always said that, if we got stuck in the desert,

We'd never be thirsty.