Thank you to all participants in this year's Fighting Words Poetry Contest! See all winners and finalists and explore their poems here. Stay tuned for more information about next year's contest, which will open in March 2023.
Announcing the 2022 Pulitzer Center Poetry Contest!
How can poetry be an effective response to current events and underreported stories? How can we use poetry to connect global issues to our local and personal contexts? Students are invited to explore these questions and make their voices heard in their entries to the Fighting Words Poetry Contest.
Para ver esta página en español, haga clic aquí.
Eligibility:
Any current K-12 student in the United States or internationally may enter. Students may write in any language, and are welcome to submit multilingual poems. Judges will have reading fluency in English and Spanish.
Prizes:
- 1st place: $300, publication on the Pulitzer Center website
- 2nd place: $200, publication on the Pulitzer Center website
- 3rd place: $100, publication on the Pulitzer Center website
- Finalists: $75, publication on the Pulitzer Center website
Deadline:
Sunday, May 15, 2022, 11:59pm EST
Entry guidelines:
Go to the Pulitzer Center website and select a story (see the “Suggested Stories” tab above for a curated list). Write a poem of any form and length that includes lines from the story. Include an epigraph in the following format: With lines from "STORY TITLE" by JOURNALIST NAME, a Pulitzer Center reporting project.
The form will ask for some basic information, and you will upload your poem to the form as an attachment. You may also upload an audio or video file of yourself performing your poem; this file is optional, but the text file is required.
If you have questions about these guidelines or if the entry form is not accessible to you, please email education@pulitzercenter.org.
Judging criteria:
Poems will be judged by the following criteria:
1. Success of the poem on its own terms (craft, linguistic style, emotion, etc.)
- Questions to ask yourself:
- What response(s) do I want to evoke in my reader? Have I chosen the best words to evoke this response?
- Have I used poetic devices (e.g. repetition, imagery, metaphor), or chosen not to use them, to achieve a specific effect?
2. Successful inclusion of lines quoted from a Pulitzer Center story
- Questions to ask yourself:
- Have I chosen lines that add something important to the poem?
- Are the lines integrated into the poem smoothly, so their presence feels natural?
3. Thoughtful choice of perspective and respectful treatment of subject matter
- Questions to ask yourself:
- What is my relationship to the story I have chosen? How can I make a personal connection?
- Why am I writing from the perspective I have chosen? What other perspectives could I choose, and how would those choices change the poem?
- If the subjects of the story I have chosen read my poem, how might they feel?
Previous contest winners:
Read the winning poems from 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018.
Support for preparing students for the contest:
Please navigate to the "Resources for Teachers and Students" tab above to find a slide presentation to lead students through a preparatory workshop and a graphic organizer to support the workshop and guide students as they write their poems. The "Suggested Stories" tab contains a curated list of stories suggested for different grade levels.
You can also schedule a free, virtual workshop facilitated by a member of the Pulitzer Center education team. To make a request, please email education@pulitzercenter.org and let us know...
- What is the name of your school, and where is it located?
- What date(s) / time(s) is your class available for a workshop? (Please include time zone)
- What do you teach, and what grade are your students in?
- Approximately how many students do you expect to join the workshop?
- What virtual platform would you like to use? (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.)
- Will students be able to join the virtual workshop link individually? (This is ideal, but we can work with any technological setup.)
Use These Resources to Write Your Poem or Facilitate a Workshop Independently
You can find inspiration and models by exploring poems written by past contest winners. Here are the winners and finalists from 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018!
Workshop overview: In this workshop, participants will examine the intersections of poetry and journalism. You will have the opportunity to explore underreported news stories, analyze poems that respond to those stories, and write your own poems using a pressing story of your choice. Poems produced in this workshop can be entered into the Fighting Words Poetry Contest for the chance to win cash prizes and publication.
Schedule a Workshop with the Pulitzer Center Education Team
Would you like to schedule an interactive virtual workshop to prepare your students for the Fighting Words Poetry Contest? Email education@pulitzercenter.org to schedule for a free workshop! Let us know in your email...
- What is the name of your school, and where is it located?
- What date(s) / time(s) is your class available for a workshop? (Please include time zone)
- What do you teach, and what grade are your students in?
- Approximately how many students do you expect to join the workshop?
- What virtual platform would you like to use? (Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.)
- Will students be able to join the virtual workshop link individually? (This is ideal, but we can work with any technological setup.)
Team members are also available to facilitate workshops in Spanish.
Students may write in response to any news story on the Pulitzer Center website. Here are a few suggested news stories to get you started!
Stories for Grades 3 and up
- No School, No Hair Cut: One Girl’s Journey Through One of the World’s Longest COVID Lockdowns [Photo, text]
- In Isolation, Abby Dreams of Space [Video, illustrations]
- Afropunk Brings the Black Lives Matter Ethos Abroad [Photo, text]
- To Fully Vaccinate Population, Ghana Faces Scarcity and a Troubled History [Audio]
- Down from the Mountains: Millions of Chinese Kids Are Parenting Themselves [Video]
- Taking Care of Each Other: Madison Communities Respond to Food Insecurity in the Age of COVID [Text]
Stories for Grades 6 and up
- The Lost Ancestors [Video]
- How Stigma Makes It Harder to Fight Epidemics [Text]
- Destined for Bullfighting, He Chose To Revolutionize Flamenco Instead–by Dancing in Drag [Video]
- No Bars, No Chains, No Locks: How Finland Is Reimagining Incarceration [Photo, text]
- An American Emergency: America’s Hottest Cities [Photo, text, audio]
- The Untold Story of Black Cowboys in America: How One Florida Farmer Made History [Video, text]
- Moving Migrants: Inside Bangladesh’s Climate Migration [Video]
- The High-altitude Quest to Save Alpacas [Photo, text]
- Philippine Fishermen Stranded at Sea by Pandemic: ‘We Think About Jumping Overboard’ [Text]
Stories for Grades 9 and up
- How Greece Secretly Adopted the World’s most Brazen—and Brutal—Way of Keeping Out Refugees [Text]
- Who’s Watching? How Governments Used the Pandemic to Normalize Surveillance [Photo, text]
- Lack of Government Support Leads to Grassroots Effort To Aid LGBTQ Asylum Seekers [Photo, text]
- In the Trenches of Ukraine’s Forever War [Photo, text]
- Young Climate Activists Warn Their Elders: Stop Destroying the Planet [Text]
- Criminal Justice or Criminal Injustice? The Power of Language [Text]
- Visions of Coronavirus: Indigenous Memory of the Pandemic [Photo, text]
- Nearly 100 Confederate Monuments Were Toppled Last Year. What Happened to Them? [Photo, video]
Stories in Spanish
- Lilia: defender la fauna acuática del Amazonas es defender el mundo [Foto, texto, video]
- El pueblo que habla con las plantas [Video]
- Somos trabajadoras esenciales [Foto, texto]
- Una empresa minera amenaza la vida del oso andino en Colombia [Foto, texto, video]
- El bus que nunca llega: Los migrantes varados en las calles de Lima tomada por la pandemia [Foto, texto]
- Lo que no hace el Estado, lo hacemos nosotras [Foto, texto]
- Perdí la memoria de la vida [Foto, texto]
- Destined for Bullfighting, He Chose To Revolutionize Flamenco Instead–by Dancing in Drag [Video]
- Los wampis: primer gobierno autónomo indígena de Perú contraataca la deforestación [Foto, texto, audio]
- En pandemia, Latinoamérica no pudo proteger a mujeres de sus agresores [Foto, texto]
- Los niños, el «pasaporte» de los migrantes para alcanzar el sueño americano [Foto, texto]
- Las horas muertas [Foto, texto, video]
- En las sombras de la emergencia [Foto, texto]