Poetry Contest Winners

Previous winners

Every contest we publish the winning poem on Free the Verse. Read all past winners below.

Contests run
10
Awarded to poets
$1000
Current open contests
1

All Contest Winners

Contest Winner
Simple — Hannah Keeton Hughson
Fall is here yellowing yards. He died the whole evening, for really two evenings, for really two years almost to the day
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Contest Winner
How to Quit Being Kept — Rebecca Kalafatas
you don’t need to exist outside the red earth of your gums. throw away anything that keeps you
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Contest Winner
Lute Man — Chiwenite Onyekwelu
      The man on the sidewalk drags
himself along the tar        hands steady 
      on a lute          dust on his     shorts
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Contest Winner
Body — Gabriel Chavez
i lay there  young buck sanctified          your beached body                                               in the way wanting knows
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Contest Winner
Eating Cats and Dogs — Kesper Wang
I look at my cat and wonder
If I’d eat him in case of some
apocalyptic event, or if he’d eat me
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Contest Winner
Safety First — Ping Yi Yee
Patent No. US3071856A protects the Safety Razor, property of one Irwin W. Fischbein of 18 Joyce Road, Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
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Contest Winner
After Rain — Madison Bertenshaw
I taste currents. Creosote, mud, agave, caliche, spines, javelina shit. You stab me like a cactus collecting the desert.
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Contest Winner
Anton in Summer — Natalie Susak
In class I learn the word for summer: ljeto. This summer: ljetos. This summer figs fall from trees
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Contest Winner
Aunty Nor — Farrah Lucia Jamaluddin
“If you are not a little bad from time to time
how can you learn to be a little good?”
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Contest Winner
A Wake — Keri Withington
I took the lake road home from the neurologist’s office.
    It’s pretty
    and I can’t
    deal with traffic
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