Cabot -celebrate your cooperative spirit in a poem!

Write a poem that tells us how you have made a difference to your community and the people who live there.

• You must be a student in Grades 5-8.
• Your entry must be your own original, unpublished work.
• You may submit only one poem, no longer than 20 lines in length.
• You must list your name, grade level, school name and address and
• your teacher or adult sponsors name, phone number and email

Get Published: Publications Looking For Creative Writing and Poetry

Magazines

• Spider, Cricket, Ask and Muse magazines run monthly writing contests. Each has a specific theme and deadline, so be sure to look at the current issue. For guidelines go to cricketmag.com, call 800-821-0115 or write to:

  Carus Publishing Company
  315 Fifth St. P.O. Box 300
  Peru, IL 61354
  

• Creative Kids Magazine: The National Voice for Kids publishes works by kids ages 8 to 14. For guidelines, go to prufrock.com or call 800-998-2208.
• Merlyn's Pen Magazine. Annual publication of teen writing: fiction, essays, poetry. For guidelines, go to merlynspen.org or call 800-247-2027.
• Potato Hill Poetry Website. Publishes Poems of the Month and writing exercises for teachers and students K-12. Workshops and residencies are also available. For guidelines, go to potatohill.com, e-mail info@potatohill.com or call 508-272-1999.
• Stone Soup: A magazine by young writers and artists. Poetry, fiction, essays, artwork by young people through age 13. For guidelines, go to stonesoup.com or call 800-447-4569.
• Anthology of Poetry, Inc. Publishes annual anthology of student poems grades 1-12. For guidelines, call 336-626-7762, visit anthologyofpoetry.com, or write to

  148 Sunset Ave.
  P.O. Box 698
  Asheboro, NC 27204
  

• The Children's Better Health Institute offers 7 magazines which look for poems, jokes and drawings: Children's Playmate (ages 6-8), Jack And Jill (ages 7-10), Child Life (ages 9-11), Turtle Magazine(preschool), Humpty Dumpty(ages 4-6), U.S. Kids(ages 6-10), and Children's Digest (ages 10-12). For guidelines, go to cbhi.org or call 317-634-1100.
• Highlights for Children magazine publishes poetry, prose and artwork by children up to pre-teen. For guidelines, go to www.highlights.com.
• The Apprentice Writer accepts prose, poetry, photos and artwork submitted by high school students. For guidelines, go to www.susqu.edu/writers/highschoolstudents.htm or write to

  Gary Fincke, Writers Institute Director
  Susquehanna University
  Selingsgrove, PA 17870-1001
  

• Upwords Poetry is a website upwordspoetry.com featuring and promoting the poetry and writing of young artists. Includes many great poetry-related links.
• Young Voice Magazine publishes prose, artwork and poetry from elementary, middle and high school students. For guidelines, go to youngvoicesmagazine.com or call 360-357-4683.
• Teen Ink is an online site specifically for teenagers interested in a variety of writing fields. Visit teenink.com for more information.
• New Moon is a magazine for girls and young women. It has opportunities for publishing fiction and poetry. Visit newmoon.org for more information

Other Publication Possibilities

• Call your state's Department of Education to see if they publish a statewide poetry journal or sponsor a statewide poetry/writing contest.
• Call your state's Council of English Teachers to see if they sponsor an annual book of creative writing.
• Call local television stations and newspapers: many of them will publish poems and also sponsor annual poetry contests.
• Market Guide for Young Writers: Fifth Edition: 1996. Over 150 opportunities for writers ages 8-18. (This is an excellent resource.)
• Contact radio stations about hosting a live on-air poetry reading either at school or their station.
• Contact local banks and other businesses in your community and ask them to consider displaying student work on their walls. Just as artists use those walls, so too, can poets.
• Have students put together individual chapbooks of their poems. They should make the same decisions poets do regarding organization: chronologically, thematically, short to long, humorous to serious, good to best, etc. They might include artwork and an autobiographical sketch.
• Have students put together a classroom anthology of their best poems. Let them make decisions just as editors would.
• Devote an entire hallway in your school ("The Poetry Hall") to poems. Put up student work throughout the year, perhaps a new class gets to be published on the wall each month.
• Start each day with a poem read by a different student in your classroom or before daily announcements for the entire school.
• Post a poem of the day written by students and others on the school bulletin board for all to see.
• Set up a classwide or schoolwide poetry reading. Invite parents and the community to hear students read their poems. You might add dancers and musicians to this program.
• Set up a coffeehouse-style poetry reading in your classroom or home. Have students sign up to read their work. Atmosphere is everything. Don't forget the refreshments.
• Host a poetry slam at your school. There are so many ways to set this up. The form is being reinvented all the time. Students can sign up to read their own work, to read the poems of others, to make up poems on the spot when given a subject. Sometimes the audience will vote on these performances. You might be careful how you set this up. It needn't be competitive.