On July 13th, 2024, in the Los Angeles Public Library, Claremont High School senior Mairead Lucke stood at a microphone and read a poem at the Poet Laureate Commencement Performance at LA Public Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. She was one of twelve Finalists for the LA Poet Laureate competition.
Now, she has been named an LA Poet Ambassador–and, because of her finalist status, is moving on to compete at the state level. After submitting an application that consisted of three poems, a CV, community service, and extracurricular hours on a whim last May, Lucke was not expecting anything.

“I was like, ‘Okay, I have poems. I do community service. Why not?’” Lucke said. “I kind of forgot that I sent it in, and then I got the email that I was a finalist.”
Of the three poems she submitted, two were free verse and one was a villanelle (a specific structured poem), spanning a variety of subjects–from mutually assured destruction in the Cold War to honeysuckles to theater. Imagery and poems with structure, as she views it, as a fun challenge, and pastoral poetry continues to be an inspiration.
“I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil, pretty much,” Lucke said. “But I didn’t really get interested in poetry until middle school. A poetry assignment for my English teacher was to write a sonnet, and I started doing poetry after that before I moved to California.”
Since then, Lucke says that she has tried to write poems at least once a week–and for two or three years, when she had more time, she wrote one every day. However, Lucke’s passion for writing is not only limited to poetry–it appears in her work with the CHS theatre, an organization Lucke has been a part of since she moved sophomore year. In addition to acting in Musical Theater and Advanced Theater Production, Lucke has been extending her reach to something else.

“I’ve also gotten into playwriting,” Lucke said. “I wrote a play for the 24-hour plays here back in October, and then another play of mine is debuting at the One Acts in March.”
So if students want to see a play written by an LA Poet Ambassador, they should visit the One Acts! As for future plans, Lucke is unsure but is hoping to take a poetry elective or two in college. In the meantime she wants to encourage other CHS students to use poetry as a creative outlet—it can be as simple as writing a quick, free verse poem just to gather their emotions.
The future is open—and anything is possible for Lucke. She has proven that an application sent on a whim has the potential to win. Being selected as LA Poet Ambassador is an honor, which represents her dedication to poetry, the community, and to her extracurriculars. As she waits for results from the state level competition, the Wolfpacket Staff wish her nothing but luck—and Lucke’s poems truly deserve all of the praise they have received.

Lucke’s poems, “The Actress” and “honeysuckle wind,” can be read below. They are two of the three poems that she submitted to the LA Youth Poet Laureate competition.