Five district junior high school students have been named winners in the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association's 13th annual Student Poetry Contest, “A Child Went Forth.”

This year’s honorees included P.J. Gelinas Junior High School eighth-grader Abdullah Nauman, ninth-grader Elizabeth Concepcion and R.C. Murphy Junior High School ninth-graders Kelsey Ge, Ari Nezaria and Varsha Talanki.

There were more than 3,000 entries to the contest this year. These students will receive their awards in early June at the Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington Station. During the ceremony, the students will also attend a poetry reading from Robert Pinsky, a nationally recognized poet and Walt Whitman Birthplace Association 2016 Poet-in-Residence.