Beverly Hopkins Poetry Contest for High School Students
SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN
First Prize: $225
Second Prize: $125
Third Prize: $75
Winning poems will be published on Saint Louis Poetry Center’s website.
2025 Contest Judge:
Niki Herd
Photo credit: Madeline Brenner
Niki Herd
Niki Herd is the author of two poetry collections, The Stuff of Hollywood (2024) and The Language of Shedding Skin (2011),and the chapbook don’t you weep (2022). With Meg Day, she co-edited Laura Hershey: On the Life & Work of an American Master (2019), named one of the year’s “hidden gems” by Ms. Magazine. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Herd’s poetry, essays, and criticism, appear in or are forthcoming from The Adroit, Poetry Daily, Pleiades, Action, Spectacle, New England Review, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Copper Nickel, the Academy of American Poets (Poem-a-Day), Lit Hub, The Rumpus, Obsidian, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. Her poems have been anthologized in This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, Resisting Arrest: Poems to Stretch the Sky, Just Like a Girl: A Manifesta!, and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South.
Herd’s work has been supported by MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation, Bread Loaf, the Newberry Library, the DC Commission on the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem. Herd has taught at the University of Houston and Washington University in St. Louis. She is an assistant professor at Franklin & Marshall College.
Submissions Open:
December 1 – March 15
Entry Fee:
None
GUIDELINES:
- Open to all high school students in the St. Louis metro area living within a 100-mile radius of St. Louis
- Submit up to 3 typed poems per entry, any form and length
- No manuscripts will be returned
- Poems previously published in high school publications are allowed
- Include name (no pen name required) and email address on each poem
- Enclose a cover sheet that includes: name, address, phone number, email address, high school, grade, teacher’s name (if she/he/they encouraged or assigned the poems), and the titles of the poems submitted
- Contest results will be announced in May
Prize winners and honorable mentions are invited to read their poems at Saint Louis Poetry Center’s annual Poetry Concert.
HOW TO SUBMIT:
Or mail entries to:
Saint Louis Poetry Center
Hopkins High School Poetry Contest
3301 Washington Ave. # 2D
Saint Louis, MO 63103
ONLINE & POSTMARK DEADLINE EXTENDED: March 15, 2025
Questions:
If you have questions or any issues submitting your contest entry online, please email:
[email protected]
Congratulations to our 2024 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Paul Thibodeau, Saint Louis University High School
Etymology
SECOND PLACE
Brie Shelley-Piccinini, Ladue Horton Watkins High School
Taper Off
THIRD PLACE
Addison Farthing, Gateway Science Academy
Sidewalk Poetry
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Simon Edgell, Saint Louis University High School
Wallflower
Mohini Mahajan, Clayton High School
When My Parents Were Kids
Jelani Penny-Johnson, Metro Academic & Classical High School
Street Justice
Paul Thibodeau, Saint Louis University High School
Lunation
Brie Shelley-Piccinini, Ladue Horton Watkins High School
Bird Named Love
Congratulations to our 2023 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Hira Ahmed, Parkway South High School
the motherland –
SECOND PLACE
Shangri-La Hou, John Burroughs School
Second Migration
THIRD PLACE
Ovya Diwakaran, Ladue Horton Watkins High School
Identity Series Poems, I and II
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Zayna Fakhani, Parkway South High School
Empire
Meg Handley, Nerinx Hall High School
Quilts
Shangri-La Hou, John Burroughs School
Sandia
Bethany Lai, Clayton High School
Xi Herculis
Mohini Mahajan, Clayton High School
A Floridian’s Pastoral: From Heat-Waves to Hieratic
Congratulations to our 2022 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Tenley Hall, Clayton High School
Up North
SECOND PLACE
Jelani Penny-Johnson, Metro Academic & Classical High School
This is the Life We Have
THIRD PLACE
Margaret Handley, Nerinx Hall High School
Threadwork
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Delaney Carey, Nerinx Hall High School
To Pin A Bouncy-Ball Down
Charlie Wagner, St. Louis Priory School
What the Bartender Said
Nicholas Merlo, Crossroads College Preparatory School
Kick Me While I’m Down
Tatum Ladner, Clayton High School
Brown Buttons
Congratulations to our 2021 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Oviya Srihari, Ladue Horton Watkins High School
Partition as Narrated by an American Daughter
SECOND PLACE
Grace Ruo, Hazelwood West High School
African in America
THIRD PLACE
Cedric Bruges, St. Louis Priory School
Building Sandcastles
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Lara Wulff, Central Visual & Performing Arts High School
Cicada Funeral
Rachel Voss, Fort Zumwalt South High School
Moonshine Boy
Oviya Srihari, Ladue Horton Watkins High School
Advice from Your Daily Horoscope
Congratulations to our 2020 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Rowan Elliott, Gateway Science Academy
Adagio
SECOND PLACE
Adam Figueras, St. Louis Priory School
If a Girl Kept All Her Kings in the Back Row
THIRD PLACE
Amina Aser, Parkway West High School
My Lost Art Project
Congratulations to our 2019 Winners!
FIRST PLACE
Megan McGhee, Kirkwood High School
Oldest Moon
SECOND PLACE
Ann Zhang, John Burroughs School
Doomsday: The Asian Superstore
THIRD PLACE
Rachel Lyu, St. Louis University High School
Untitled (The World After Wine)
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Christina Giudici, Nerinx Hall High School
Rocket Science
Sarah Corrigan, Visitation Academy
Through the Cracks
Madeline Burns, Parkway West High School
February, in a White Nissan Versa