2026 High School Poetry Contest
We are excited to launch this year's High School Poetry Contest. 52 poems were selected for the 2026 High School Poetry Anthology. Click here for submission guidelines, information about this year's judge, and prizes.
About the Poetry Contest
The Marin Poetry Center sponsors teen-related projects that celebrate the arts through our High School Poetry Contest, which provides students with professional review, selection, and publishing via our High School Poetry Anthology. Also, students selected for the anthology are invited to read their work at our Launch Reading in the spring of each year and receive a free anthology copy. For many students, inclusion in our anthology is their first experience writing and/or publishing a poem. In the process, students tap into a special part of themselves and learn the power of their unique voice. Thank you for supporting the MPC High School Poetry Contest.
A note from MPC High School Anthology Editor, Maxine Flasher-Düzgüneş
The Marin Poetry Center is thrilled to announce the winners and honorable mentions of the 2026 High School Anthology Contest! To follow the past few years, we opened our contest to Bay Area counties beyond Marin. Semifinalists were selected by a panel of experienced poets and our final judge, Kehinde Badiru, selected the finalists. Book design by Lisa Rappoport & cover art by Ruby Zhang.
While there was no theme for this year’s anthology, the students selected put forth potent narratives that continued to break the barriers of the page — the double-yellow lines, the oscillations between sound waves, the walls separating ships from their rogue poets. Shedding light on “a shadowed road,” unmasking “a bullet’s violet whistle,” and dropping into “the weight of the silence,” these poems yielded what I can only describe as a lifeboat to the rocky waters of our world. As Hafez eloquently puts it, now is the time to jump — not to give up, but to dive deep, to travel, to research where can our hearts intersect with our words, where can the lines we draw in the margins find a place among the waves.
2026 WINNERS
1 st Place: When I Thought I Was Lovable: – Julianna Calahong-Zamora, El Cerrito High School
2 nd Place: What you choose to see – Vera Woo, The Branson School
3 rd Place: mange – Oli Siva, Ruth Asawa School of the Arts
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Sunny Day – Jude Snelling, Tamalpais High School
Tell me, Mother – Koharu Toshi, Marin School of the Arts
Undercurrent – Siya Gopal, Dougherty Valley High School
47 additional poems have been selected for inclusion in the anthology, which launched on May 27, 2026.
The best way to order anthologies is online. Please note that $4.20 will be automatically added to your order to cover shipping and handling costs for the first book and an additional $1.50 for each additional book. Contact highschool@marinpoetrycenter.org with any questions.
Order, 2026 $20
]Order, 2025 $20
Order, 2024 $18
Order, 2023 $18
