Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards 2025: Competition Rules

— All entries to the Gwendolyn Brooks Youth Poetry Awards (GBYPA) must be submitted by Wednesday, May 1, 2025 at 11:59 p.m.

— The contest is open to young people currently in kindergarten through 12th grade across the state of Illinois.

— Limit one original poem per student, written in the current school year (August - May). Poems are judged based on student grade level.

— Poems for grades K-5 have a limit of 25 lines. Poems for grades 6-12 have a limit of 50 lines. Blank lines between stanzas are not counted.

— Poems must be uploaded as a PDF or word document (DOC or DOCX).

— Identifying information such as student name, school, and email should not appear on the uploaded poem itself. Please remove this information from the poem so that judges can be unbiased. Only the poem title and the poem itself should appear in the uploaded file.

— All entries must be the original work of the young person submitting the poem. The GBYPA has a no-tolerance policy for plagiarism and AI generated writing (ChatGPT or any other AI programs). 

Note: An independent panel of judges will determine semi-finalists, and winners will be selected by a panel of finalist judges. All judges’ decisions are final.

We recommend you do your writing in a word processing program (e.g., Microsoft Word) and then upload the file into the form. We also recommend that create an account so that you can save your application along the way.

If you are a teacher wanting to upload student poems in bulk, please visit ilhumanities.secure-platform.com/site/page/Bulk for instructions.

Questions or concerns? Feel free to email us at poetry@ilhumanities.org. We're happy to help!