30 Sep 2025 Youth of the Month: Kortland Baldridge

By Lori Dunn

Kortland Baldridge might just be a seventh-grade Renaissance man. He’s a farm kid who spent the summer working with his pigs in preparation to show them at the Cleburne County Fair this fall. However, Kortland may also have a future as a writer. He found out when school started in August that his poem titled “Country People Shopping” was published in the most recent Arkansas Writers in the Schools Anthology.

Last year, when he was in sixth grade, he and other students from Quitman Public Schools’ gifted and talented program attended a writing workshop led by graduate students from the University of Arkansas. Kortland had never written a poem before and was not sure what to write. The assignment included writing prompts, though, and that inspired his creativity.

“There were things to help you. One sentence had to have an animal in it and one had to have a sound in it,” he said.

Kortland knows animals, so he was ready to get started. 

He used his childhood on the farm as inspiration and wrote the following poem:

“Shopping is for city people. Kinda like if a cricket growled, it wouldn’t belong.

Can country people even shop? 

This breaks my heart.

Country people can shop for livestock

 and trucks and that sort of stuff.

Yeah, country people can shop, 

it might break their wallet, 

but at least it ain’t breaking their heart.”

The poem was published in the Arkansas Writers in the Schools 2024-2025 anthology “This Is My Life And I Say It’s Perfect.” Kortland was surprised when his GT instructor told him he was a published poet. He said he never considered being a writer before but might try his hand at poetry or stories in the future.

Kortland is the son of Aaron and Callie Baldridge. He is an only child and loves being the only one, he said. He has a lot of pets and farm animals and enjoys riding his four-wheeler during his free time.

A student rarely has free time when they show animals. Kortland spent time over the summer showing five different pigs in jackpot shows. These shows are judged and give cash prizes. Kortland was frustrated that he did not do well in the jackpot (or practice) shows, but he made up for it when show season started at the county fair.

He won Grand Overall Market, Grand Commercial Gilt, Grand Overall Supreme Breeding Gilt and Champion Junior Showman at the Cleburne County Fair in early September. He can now compete in district fairs.

Kortland also plays center and defensive end on Quitman’s seventh-grade football team. His parents know they have a talented son, but were still surprised to learn he is a published poet.

“We were completely shocked,” Callie Baldridge said.

Callie said she always asks Kortland what happened during the school day, but he failed to mention the poem at first. The mother and son were out running errands when he remembered.

“We were walking into the bank and he told the bank clerks he had been published,” she said with a laugh.

“He’s a good kid. We are very proud of him,” she said.