By Jorge Casuso

November 20, 2013 -- There are plenty of kids who say they want to be an astronaut, but not many say they want to be an astronaut -- and a poet.

Lucinda Empson-Speiden, a third grader at Crossroads in Santa Monica, seems to be on her way. Her poem “Seashells” was recently chosen from among thousands of entries submitted by K-12 students in the U.S. and Canada.

Future poet Lucinda Empson-Speiden (photo courtesy of the Empson-Speiden family)

Poems were chosen for their “creativity, literary merit and social significance," according to the contest’s sponsors, Creative Communication.

Lucinda, who will turn nine next week, said “Seashells” -- which was chosen as one of the ten best poems by a student in grades 3 to 6 -- was inspired by the beach in Santa Monica.

“I was thinking about how beautiful the beach looked,” she told The Lookout Tuesday. “I had written a poem on the sunset and I thought about this beautiful glowing shell. The first draft was when I scribbled it down, and it’s been embellished, and it’s so much better.”

Lucinda says she has been writing “tons” of poems since kindergarten and studying her favorite poets, Emily Dickenson and Edgar Allen Poe, especially “The Raven,” which “I suspect he rewrote thousands of times.”

“When you read poetry aloud, it’s like truth, kind of,” she said. “It’s something you devote part of yourself to doing it.”

At first, Lucinda just wanted to be an astronaut, but now “I want to be both,” she said. Space “is a very inspiring place,” she adds, although the lack of gravity will pose some problems.

“I would have to keep a very tight grip (on my poems) in space,” she said. “I would have to keep them in a drawer.”

In space, she also would have a captive audience. “I want to read my poems to astronauts,” she said.

Lucinda’s mother, Rachel Klauber-Speiden, says she would read books to Lucinda at night, but before she could finish them “she would find them and read them on her own.”

She turned to poetry so she could finish reading them in one sitting. “She loves words,” her mother said. “She loves reading.”

Klauber-Speiden says that her daughter’s ambitions have changed. “When she was really young, she wanted to be a fixer of zippers, for kids,” she said.

 “She’s always been very specific and a little bit quirky, which I guess is a good combination for creativity.”

Over the past 20 years, Utah-based Creative Communication has given more than $1 million in grants and awards to students, schools and teachers to “further encourage young people’s writings.”

“Too often the efforts of young writers are unrecognized and they lose their motivation to express themselves,” Creative Communications officials wrote in a statement.

“Seashells” will be published in the anthology “A Celebration of Poets” published by Creative Communications. Lucinda will also receive a $25 prize.

“I’ve been saving until I see something I really, really want,” she said.

To read Lucinda's award-winning poem, click here.