A Bouquet of Celebrations
Cash awards, publications
& TV shows for students
Border Voices students have a chance to win cash awards for their
poems, as well as TV appearances and publication of their poems in the
annual anthology.
The contest is open only to students who participate in classes taught by Border Voices Poet–Teachers:
* Winners of cash awards in the annual contest are announced each Spring. We plan to have the winners read their poems on TV and/or via Cloudcast digital broadcasting. Once the current health regulations are lifted, we will resume the annual fair, where in past years hundreds and sometimes thousands of people gathered to listen to student-poets as well as celebrated writers including (for example) Adrienne Rich, Sandra Cisneros, W.S. Merwin, Billy Collins and others.
* There will be cash awards this year for first-, second-, third-, and fourth-place awards in each division (lower, and upper)
How Student Poems Are Submitted
for Possible Awards & Publication
Poet-teachers will select up to five student poems per grade. For example, if the class is a 3rd / 4th combination, five poems can be submitted for each grade. These are to be submitted for judging and possible publication in the Border Voices annual anthology. These poems will automatically be considered for cash prizes. The Poet-teacher is not one of the judges and the judges remain anonymous until the anthology is published. Awards are given at the annual poetry fair and/or on ITV or Cloudcast. We will also have an Open Mic Reading for all the students who are published in the anthology and those who participated in workshops.
The deadline for submitting student poems for publication and possible awards is at the end of the year or the beginning of the following year, and the anthology is published in the Spring. The publication release forms must be filled out completely, signed by the student’s parent or guardian and turned in to the Poet-teacher soon after the workshop has ended. (Often students move to another classroom or graduate to another school.) The parent or guardian signature on these forms is consent for the student’s poem to be published but there is no guarantee of publication. That is up to the panel of judges.
If you are interested in supplementary activities that require additional time and fees, then it is best to inquire before the actual workshop sessions begin in 2021. Or you might want to ask after the 2021 workshops end, to be implemented the following year.
One such activity would be Poet-teacher in-services, where Border Voices Poet-teachers provide classroom teachers with writing prompts and introductory lesson plans for teaching poetry. This is an extremely good investment, as in-depth studies have shown. (See footnote below)
Other supplementary activities include school assemblies and special projects such as the making of a classroom anthology.
FOOTNOTE: A study at Pershing Middle School showed that Border Voices poetry workshops resulted in “huge and continuing increases in scores on standardized English tests.” The workshops (involving all 32 classrooms and 960 students at Pershing) were designed to evaluate the long-term effects of creative writing on school achievement. The principal, Sarah Sullivan, says Border Voices was “instrumental in establishing our school-wide culture of learning” and in increasing test scores among all students, even those who had formerly performed at the lowest levels.
Border Voices Poetry Program 