Northeast Texas Poetry in Schools Contest 

Suggestions for Teachers, Parents, and Sponsors of Students

 

1) Poetry is a conversation between the mind and the heart. Help your students feel comfortable to explore interesting intellectual questions with a heart that is open to deep feelings and free to play!

 

2) Prize-winning poems are marked by originality and imagination; they celebrate the power of language! Avoid asking your whole class to write similar poems or giving prescribed subjects or forms to use. It is very difficult to choose a winner from dozens of almost identical poems.

 

3) Prize-winning poems feature language, subjects and thoughts that are mature for the grade level. Especially encourage secondary level students not to submit simplistic love and nature poems.

 

4) Prize-winning poems are extraordinary. Encourage your students to "color outside the lines" with phrasing and word choices that are surprising and yet clear in meaning and well-understood.

 

5) Prize-winning poetry speaks best with "what is between the words." Have your students examine their poems for implied meaning and connotation. Secondary students, especially, should be able to identify the underlying theme of their poems, explain metaphors and express personal insights.

 

6) Prize-winning poetry is more than fact or anecdote or narrative or even emotion. Encourage students to use imagery and metaphor, simile and sound, rhythm and repetition to make “word art.”

 

7) Expose students to a broad range of poetry before writing. Share your favorite classic poems with your students, as well as works by less famous and contemporary poets. They should see that, while traditional poetry can be impressive, not all poems rhyme, follow a set form or feature "pretty" words.

 

8) Encourage students to write about experiences that evoke conflicted feelings: fears, dreams, joys, passions, regrets, memories, worries. Remind them that prize-winning poetry compels deep thinking.

 

9) When choosing subjects to write about, especially for competitions, realize which topics will be overdone and help students choose an unusual subject or viewpoint they have experienced.

 

10) Have your students type their work, then help them check it. Neatness, good grammar and proper spelling make it easier to judge a poem on its merits! Still, it should be their own writing!

 

By submitting their writing, students agree to allow the printing of the winning poems in the Poetry in Schools Anthology, to be available for sale at the Awards Ceremony. Each school will receive a free library copy.