Poetry Application

The Bethesda Urban Partnership & The Writer's Center have partnered on the 2025 Poetry Contest. All Poetry Contest winners will be published on the Bethesda Urban Partnership website and honored at a special event during the Local Writer's Showcase in March 2025.

Topic: Open
Deadline for application: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 

Awards (Adult)
First Place - $350, published on The Writer's Center's "First Person Plural" blog, and a free class and membership to The Writer's Center.
Second Place - $250
Third Place - $150
Honorable Mention - $75 (Up to three Honorable Mentions will be selected)
Online Application for Poetry Contest - Adults 

Awards (High School)
Young Poet: $75 (Up to three Young Poets will be selected)
Online Application for Poetry Contest - High School

All winning poems will be published on the Bethesda Urban Partnership and The Writer's Center websites and will be honored at a special event during the Local Writer's Showcase in March 2025.

Requirements
Poems cannot be more than 21 lines of text. Do not double space your entry. Only one entry per person. Your poem must be your original work and must be currently unpublished. Any poems containing material that is obscene or objectionable will be disqualified. Use of AI tools like ChatGPT for the contest will result in disqualification.

Eligibility
Residents of Washington, D.C. and the select counties of Maryland (Montgomery, Prince George's, Howard and Frederick) and Virginia (Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax) are eligible. High School applicants must be residents or attend a school in Montgomery County, MD or Washington, D.C.. Current and former employees, contractors, directors, and officers of the Bethesda Urban Partnership (BUP) and their immediate family members are ineligible. Current students, relatives, or close personal friends of the judge(s) are also ineligible.
Only one entry per person.

Judge

TBA

 
Notification: Winners will be contacted in February 2025.

Copyright
All entrants retain the copyright rights that they have in the poems they submit, but by participating in this contest and submitting poems, all entrants grant Bethesda Urban Partnership (BUP) the right, license, and ability to use and publish all submitted poems (in complete form or in excerpted form) on the BUP Web site, on other Web sites, and in other media.