Poems for Action 2025 Finalists & Diverse Verse Youth Poets of the Year!
2025 Call for Poetry
design credit: Edna Cabcabin Moran
This year, as with last year, it was wonderful to read each and every submission send in response to the 2025 theme of Poems for Action. We are delighted to announce one winner and one honoree in each age category:
Winner, Elementary School Division
Rene B., “When You Lock Up Ideas”
Honoree, Elementary School Division
Ella J., “All Day”
Winner, Middle School Division
Manya S., “Tongues Over Swords”
Honoree, Middle School Division
Eve K., “Imagine”
Winner, High School Division
Bonnie S., “What I didn't know in 4th grade, when I still said the pledge of allegiance with my hand on my heart”
Honoree, High School Division
Srijana K., “Like Any Small Animal”
We are delighted to publish the winning poems on Diverse Verse.
FEATURED ELEMENTARY SCHOOL POEMS
When You Lock Up Ideas
by Rene B.
Books are ideas.
Books are free speech.
They serve to expand
The human mind’s reach.
So don’t they know:
If you lock ideas deep down
When they come out,
Their burst resounds!
We can choose what we read.
We don’t need your help!
We don’t need our favorites
Flying off the shelf.
We will read.
We will read.
We will read.
And we will make
Our own ideas.
All Day
by Ella J.
All day
With little pay
All day
Away from your kids
All day
You lose time to live
All day
Fighting battles, but you resist
Imagine this:
Barely having enough to stay alive
Never knowing what it’s like to thrive
Living a lonely solemn life
Your eyes always wet
Sweat drips down your cheeks
Just like the tears pouring down faster than the rain outside
You can’t go to work, you can’t eat, a day with no glee
All day
Separated from life’s bliss
All day
With dreams that don’t exist
All day
Chasing hope that slips like mist
All day
With little pay
FEATURED MIDDLE SCHOOL POEMS
Tongues Over Swords
by Manya S.
We unfurl our flags to the sky,
We have won the war.
We cheer and shout,
Yet our roars are hollow,
The air tastes of gunpowder and fire, and our soldiers lay below.
We watch the news, thanking our luck,
But somewhere in our hearts,
Somewhere dark yet strong,
We know that no one won the war,
Since our soldiers lay below.
We visit memorials,
We visit graves,
We visit the families,
We do everything to remember,
If we could only save,
Our soldiers who lie below.
We start to question,
Start to wonder,
What was the point?
Was the fight worth it?
We can guide our new ones,
To a place without battle,
Where voices preach beliefs freely,
Yet no blood stains the ground where we walk and worship.
Never is there an argument so great,
That can’t be solved by tongues over swords,
And although the world appears different in every eye,
In the end our blood remains the same, thick and constant.
So let us not raise hands in harm, but in understanding for each other,
And unite not through beliefs, but compassion.
Imagine
by Eve K.
Imagine
Imagine a crisp dawn
The sun rising
Bringing its light
Imagine a spring afternoon
Cool wind blowing
Through the blossoms
Reminding us that
Summer isn’t so far away
Imagine how much
Our world could change
If we could be the dawn
Be the spring
If we could be the light
If we could be the change
FEATURED HIGH SCHOOL POEMS
What I didn’t know in 4th grade,
when I still said the Pledge of Allegiance with my hand on my heart
by Bonnie S.
This land is stolen.
This land is a sin.
Don’t pretend at California or the New York Islands
until you hear the screams of those caught between death and life,
the fires crackling the midnight into morning,
the defenseless man held at gunpoint,
the children twisting and aching in their bodies, begging to be set free.
When I gave you my boxed-up loneliness, anger, desire,
repackaging it with shiny wrapping
wasn’t part of the plan.
And yet you scribbled out the label like a sugar pill,
wafted away the smells of home and double-knotted the strings.
Don’t lie — redwood forests and Gulf Stream waters can’t erase history books.
History is too slippery to contain, anyway,
and our past lives squeeze between the sentences to mock us with every backward step.
400 years of hate,
not nearly long enough to mythologize,
but fratricide excused the civil wars of Rome,
so of course you’ll try anyway.
I can’t follow the yellow-brick highway
when I’m still stuck in traffic.
No sky above me, just sedentary static.
You left scars in this land deeper than any valley,
and every four years we’ll grapple out just to stumble again.
Dred Scott, Exclusion, Lavender Scare, Atlanta.
This land was made for you alone,
and I can’t dream if I don’t sleep.
Like Any Small Animal
by Sirjana K.
i press the animal of my body against
the edges of cardboard boxes &
pray, selfishly, that i don’t hear the name
of anyone i know in the news.
i am not four years old i know the monster
isn’t papa shouting boo! behind the
door frame i know there are people in my neighbor-
hood who don’t want me in it.
along the street by the library a woman shouts
go back to your country as she crosses
& i think about that little girl i met at the park, how she
begged her mom to take her away from here.
how i grow fond of cardboard boxes because
they aren’t real boxes, not the kind
that demand a named identity, not the kind
that can close me in.
while the day ripens into sunset i am still all animal
squeezing against the corners of my
amazon-branded cage. asking god to let me walk
through the world without calling my body
something other than body not brown body not queer body
not “body that deserves to be cussed out
at a streetlight”. asking god to let me just be another
animal body.
We hope you enjoyed reading the poems! Congratulations again to those featured here!
We encourage all poets to continue their wonderful work and we’d like to remind those whose poems are not featured here that their poems still resonate in the judges’ hearts. As always, it is hard to choose from among so many talented voices.
Judges this year were Valerie Bolling (author of I See Color) and Ranjeeta Ramkumar (author of If Elephants Could Talk).
Thank you also to the following members of the Diverse Verse collaborative for their support:
Padma Venkatraman (author of Safe Harbor) created the blog posts and teaching resources, coordinated various teams, and assisted with multiple tasks.
Lisa Stringfellow (author of Kingdom of Dust) managed the application form and participant certificates, while also providing technical support for the website.
Edna Cabcabin Moran created assets, fine-tuned the website and designed the logo.
Suma Subramaniam (author of Namaste is a Greeting) disseminated the call for poems via our annual newsletter, which she created and edited.
Hanh Bui (author of Ánh’s New Word) suggested this year’s theme, which was seconded by Anindita Basu Sempere.
Margarita Engle (Young People’s Poet Laureate Emeritus and Newbery winning author) provided guidance and support.