2024 High School Poetry Contest

We are excited to launch this year's High School Poetry Contest. 52 poems were selected for the 2024 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 Gala Award Ceremony 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 2024 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, Marin Poet Laureate Francesca Bell, selected the finalists. Book design by Lisa Rappoport & cover art by Mira Klein.

The poems selected for this anthology all serve as poignant reminders of why we are alive, each one a container for the poet’s unique creative universe. I sincerely hope that every poet within these pages continues to shape their lives and experiences through language, wherever it may take them. At this moment, we are witnessing the world tearing at the seams, and while poetry cannot change all of it, it certainly can change hearts and minds and bring otherwise disparate communities together in solidarity, inside one universe. With this, I will say that as past, present, and future poets, our liberation is inseparably connected with the liberation of all peoples anywhere. No one can be free in this world until everybody is free, and poetry and the power of expression exist as prominent factors in making this possible.

2024 WINNERS

1 ^st Place: Slim’s Nocturne – Elina Kumra, Summit Tahoma
2 ^nd Place: first breakfast after coming out – Sophia deMoe, Marin School of the Arts
3 ^rd  Place:  Breaking the Old, Bad Habits –  V Cunningham, The Urban School

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The Cry of Broken Cycles – Story Hadfield, Marin School of the Arts
A Careless Wind Blows Through Me –  Ava Isabelle, Tamalpais High School
Arachnid  – Ethan Ramm, Marin School of the Arts
palmful – Anaya Ertz, Marin School of the Arts
Mourning You Already – Emma Lawson, San Rafael High School

44 additional poems have been selected for inclusion in the anthology, which launched at our Awards Ceremony and Reading on May 21, 2024.

The best way to order anthologies is online. Please note that $3.50 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.

Order, 2024 $18:

Order, 2023 $18: