This week, we’ve been rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up next is Estefania Lugo.
Estefanía Lugo is a brilliant bilingual creative strategist with a sharp eye for the written word.
She delights in exploring authors’ imaginations and celebrating the richness of their voices.
This contest is not just national but international, and we are honored to have Estefanía as part of the team!
If you are on Instagram, please head over to my page here and show her some love!
Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!
Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”
This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.
This week, we are rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up next is BrinwiththePen.
Love-centered poet Brinwiththepen inspires safety and inclusion through her poetry and the workshops she facilitates.
Brin joined Atlanta’s poetry community in 2021 and pours into the intentional time and space of writing with The Ink Refill, a monthly poetry writing workshop.
I met her in 2024 when we were both poetry features at the same event. I also got to witness her brilliance at one of her workshops.
We are honored to have Brinwiththepen and her company as part of our judges’ panel for this year’s poetry contest!
Please help us welcome The Ink Refill to the team!
If you are on Instagram, please head over to @theinkrefill and show her some love!
We have more shout-outs to give. Stay glued.
Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!
Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”
This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.
Today, we are rolling out some of the amazing poets who are helping with this year’s contest. Up first is Joshua Clark.
Joshua Clark, who goes by Roses, is a Dallas-based spoken word poet, creative specialist, and Texas Chapter Leader of the Poetry Business Network.
He is the CEO of Sculpted Roses Company (@sculptedrosescompany), where his team offers mental health and creative writing workshops, poetry sessions, and public speaking engagements.
We are proud to have Roses and his company as part of our judging panel for this year’s poetry contest!
Please help us welcome Sculpted Roses Company to the team!
If you are on Instagram, please head over to @sculptedrosescompany and show this brother some love!
We have more shout-outs to give. Stay glued.
Reminder: This year’s poetry contest is accepting submissions from now to June 1st!
Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”
This theme explores personal loss, collective memory, survival, and the emotional weight of living in today’s world. Through this contest, we are not only uplifting poets, but we are also creating space for community storytelling, reflection, and connection through the arts.
We are pleased to announce that this year’s poetry contest is now open! Submissions will remain open until June 1, 2026.
Entry: Email Subscription (Free)*
*If you are already subscribed, you can skip this step.
Theme: “What We’re Carrying Now.”
This year’s theme centers on personal loss, collective memory, survival, endurance, and/or the emotional weight of living in today’s social and political climate.
This year, we are asking poets to create a living archive of how they are processing, surviving, and making meaning in this moment in history.
What are you carrying this season? What are we carrying now?
One of the MAJOR misconceptions about the poetry industry is that you have to do spoken word to become a prominent figure.
Performance poetry might be the most popular, but there are other ways to be profitable.
Artists like Rudy Francisco, Jasmine Mans, Prentice Powell (who was recently nominated for a Grammy), Obbie West, and others are dynamic spoken word artists I could listen to all day.
But it is not something I am passionate about doing myself.
I enjoy spoken word and have done it, but I don’t want to make a career out of performance poetry.
I am much better at reciting than performing, and I have learned there is a career in them both.
Reciting and performing poetry are two different areas of expertise we can discuss later.
Poets, let me free you today!
You can write and publish poetry books.
You can recite your poetry before an audience instead of performing it. In the same way that spoken word artists get paid to perform, you can get paid to recite!
You can get paid to write poems for others, organizations, and even movies. Think Poetic Justice. Maya Angelou wrote the poems Janet Jackson’s character Justice recited in the movie.
If you are serious about turning your passion for poetry into a profitable business, I invite you to join The Poetry Business Network.
The Poetry Business Network is a global community where poets learn how to do more with their poetry and create a poetry career.
In this community, you will learn…
How to transform yourself from an individual to an entity (business)
How to start your poetry business step-by-step
How to launch your poetry business step-by step
How to audit your poetry business (if you already have a one)
How to build your brand on a national and international scale
How to identify what services to offer
How to create predictable income with your poetry
How to create, offer, and distribute your own merchandise
How to determine what signature experience you will be known for
How to create your own platform people will be attracted to
Join Us!
And the best part? Membership is FREE (for now! Get in before that changes).
We’ve received a few questions about if rappers can enter the contest.
The short answer is yes, as rap is a form of poetry.
The longer answer requires a bit of a breakdown.
RAP and POETRY
RAP (often called Rhythm and Poetry*) uses similar forms as poetry, like verses, refrains, rhyming words, rhythm, and meter.
Rap’s origins are said to date as far back as the West African Griots, or village storytellers, and up to early examples of jazz poetry during the Harlem Renaissance Movement.
Rap lyrics that can be poetry:
“Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots I give a holler to my sisters on welfare Tupac cares, if don’t nobody else care And uh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot When you come around the block, brothas clown a lot But please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let up Forgive but don’t forget, girl, keep your head up.”
-Tupac Shakur, Keep Ya Head Up
Some poetically inclined rappers also used poetry in their raps. Common’s The Corner featuring Kanye West featured The Last Poets:
“Uh, the corner was our magic, our music, our politics Fires raised as tribal dances and war cries Broke out on different corners Power to the people Black power Black is beautiful.”
-Common, The Corner, ft Kanye West and The Last Poets
And Kendrick Lamar’s Poetic Justice infuses poetic lyricism in the song:
“With poetic justice, poetic justice If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it? I mean I write poems in these songs dedicated to you When you’re in the mood for empathy, there’s blood in my pen…”
-Kendrick Lamar, Poetic Justice
Rap and poetry share many similarities, so much so that it’s hard to see where one begins and the other ends.
Both Use:
Rhyme —both use rhyming words
Rhythm and meter —both use language that creates rhythm.
Verses —both use verses or stanzas to separate ideas.
Refrains — both use the repetition of lines or entire stanzas/verses.
Subject Matter —both can discuss all possible subjects and commonly speak on the same ones (for example, heartbreak, loss, grief, and death)
Here’s Where it Gets Tricky:
We can best sum up the confusion in the words of Adam Bradley from this article: “…that poetry only exists on the page, and rap only lives in the music, that poetry is refined, and rap is raw, that poetry is art and rap is entertainment…”
But poetry can also live in music, be raw and entertaining, and rap can be refined on the page.
So, how do we know the difference?
Rap is a musical genre in which vocal expression is essential, respecting rhymes and rhythmic diction.
Poetry is literature and more verbal. Rhymes and music are not mandatory, and the message is even more emphasized.
“Poetry … is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.”
Bradley writes: “Economy of language remains one of poetry’s hallmarks. By contrast, language in rap is usually abundant, functioning on the rhetorical principle of copia, which Erasmus defined in 1512 as a practice of amplifying expression through variation, adornment, and play.”
“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
— William Wordsworth, from “Preface to Lyrical Ballads.”
“Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.”
It’s a debate that is sure to be ongoing for some time.
Rap is a form of poetry, but every rapper is not a poet.
A rap is a poem when it:
Deals heavily with emotions
Uses thoughtful language and poetic techniques (alliteration, metaphor, imagery, etc..)
Is composed with depth, storytelling
Shows off the writer’s creativity
Yes, rappers can enter this contest as long as they write a poem.
When submitting your poem, whether as a poet or rapper, be sure that you are following the contest’s theme, which is GRACE. When submitting an audio or video, be careful not to send content that sounds more like rap songs than poems. There is a clear difference that should be expressed.
*Although it sounds nice (and there’s nothing wrong with using it as such), RAP is not an acronym for Rhythm and Poetry. Initially, rap meant to strike or hit. It then transitioned to mean to talk or speak in the African American community. Some older generations still say: “Let me rap to you,” when they want to talk to you. During the heightened political era of the 1960s and 70s, the men who stood on the corners teaching, like Malcolm X, were said to be “rapping.”
When it comes to the arts, poetry is my first love, and this contest is my way of giving back to the poetry community to shed light on the power of the spoken and written word and the artists who love it.
It is not just a contest but a movement to discover and elevate those who have always desired to pursue their artistic ambitions in poetry but have been either discouraged from doing so or have allowed fear to hold them back.
If you’ve been looking for a sign to get back to your creative writing endeavors, this is it!
Write a poem on this year’s theme: GRACE. You may include an audio or video with your document!
SUBSCRIBE to the Email List if you are not already.
Email your poem to yecheilyah@yecheilyahysrayl.com on or BEFORE the deadline of November 30, 2023.
Winners announced on Thursday, December 28th.
Theme: GRACE
Submissions Accepted:
Monday, October 23, 2023 – Thursday, November 30, 2023
Winners Announced on December, 28, 2023.
Click THIS link to subscribe to the list and then email your poem by the deadline!
Note. Each year, an email subscription is necessary to enter the contest. To avoid a yearly subscription, click the “Poetry Contest Updates Only” box on the form. This will subscribe you to the contest list exclusively, and you will only receive contest updates, rather than having to resubscribe year after year.
If you are already subscribed to the list you may go ahead and submit your poem.
The PBS Blog 