Here’s an amazing teen publishing opportunity housed by the Asheville Writers in the Schools & Community. Thank you, Janet Hurley, for sharing!

If you know a teen between the ages 13-19 who can’t wait to get work published, tell them to check out Word on the Street / La Voz de Los Jovenes: a new online magazine of arts and writing by youth, for youth. Submissions are open, and free!

Visioned, created and led by a core squad of youth of color, the magazine is open to all youth and is bilingual. Submissions can be in English or Spanish.

River Styx 2014 Founder’s Award

The River Styx Founder’s Award is an annual poetry contest for high school students. Winner recieves $150 prize, with full scholarship to the Medina Workshop for High School Students.

Submissions open now!

• Entrants may include up to five original poems on separate pieces of paper.
• Poems should be titled and should not include the student’s name on the poems themselves.
• On a separate cover sheet, please include student poet’s name, titles of submissions, the poet’s age, grade, school, address, phone number, and e-mail.
• Winners will be announced in the first week of May.

To enter, send your submission by May 1, 2014 to:

River Styx Founders Award
3547 Olive Street, Suite 107
St. Louis, MO 63103

Photo credit: MrGaryLarson

Getting started today is going to take some muscles,
like the kind you need to get through a triathlon.
Getting started today is going to take some heart,
like crawling on your knees to the top of Mt. Everest.
Getting started today is going to take a miracle,
like a bunch of miracles all tied together.
How on earth am I going to do this?
Dig deep and keep moving forward.

by Gaby, 5th grade

Click the link above to listen to the poem read on KPFT radio by Jacob Holmes, a 7th grader at Johnston Middle School For the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. The background music is “Hope” by Future World Music. Produced by Susan Phillips.

This poem is featured as part of the 2014 Poem A Day campaign, a National Poetry Month celebration by Writers in the Schools (WITS) that features a different poem by a WITS student every day during April. Click here to learn more.

Original post published: December 2, 2013

Read This:

Now Try This:

List some reasons that YOU write.  After you have a list, pick your favorite reason and expand on it. Turn it into a poem with concrete imagery. For example, you might say:

I write poems

because I love

to play with

words,

orange leaves

flitting through the air,

arranging themselves

in never-ending

patterns.

Once you write your own poem, you can share your poem on Instagram with the hash tag #WhereWordsFly.  Just take a photo of it, and include WITS in the post, tag it @WITSHouston.

Photo credit: Ercwttmn

Oh, tacos del Julio, you are the object of my nine lives!

You are always hot and ready!

You always taste so good because I made you!

You are easy to cook.

Compared to you, tacos mios, pizza has too much cheese

And fries taste like salt!

I want everything made out of tacos!

I want it to rain tacos mios!

Oh, tacos, how I love you!

by Julio, 4th grade

Click the link above to listen to the poem read on KPFT radio by Alex Cweren, a 7th grader at Johnston Middle School For the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston. The background music is “Taquito Militar” by Eddy Navia. Produced by Susan Phillips.

This poem is featured as part of the 2014 Poem A Day campaign, a National Poetry Month celebration by Writers in the Schools (WITS) that features a different poem by a WITS student every day during April. Click here to learn more.