Dimensions in Education Today

Live Poets Society of N.J.

WHO WE ARE

We are a religiously directed organization with a desire to honor and encourage the youth of America in pursuits poetic. We believe this endeavor to be a journey of faith, necessary for us to undertake because of the burden placed upon our hearts for youth and their experiences in today’s society.

WHAT WE DO

We intend to lift up and honor young poets, to encourage them to continue into higher levels of education, and to provide a forum for young poets to showcase their work and to make their own statements through their poetry.

HOW WE DO THAT

We run an annual High School Poetry Contest open to all U S high school students. This year's top prize winner will receive $1000 in college scholarship money. We also publish an anthology at the end of each contest featuring only the very best poetry available from the contest.

THE LONG VERSION

We have been publishing high school poetry anthologies and running scholarship poetry contests since 1998. This is our 11th annual contest. Those of us who conceived and created this organization did so because we felt, and continue to feel spiritually led to do so, through past experiences we have had with youth, poetry, education, and, yes, you guessed it, poetry.com as well. We felt the youth of America deserved a place that would provide an opportunity for serious young poets to have their work read, respected and published with dignity, instead of being led on by unscrupulous "publishers" who declare every poem entered to be the "Poem of the Year" and make millions by charging exorbitant prices, while stamping out a book a week

We fund the scholarships through profits from book sales. The price is fair. We don't sell millions of them, but those who are interested in the poetry buy them and enjoy reading their own and other young poet's work...and those who are only interested in winning a scholarship...Well, we'll publish their poems too, but only if they are good enough. It generally balances out. We are the "anti-poetry.com". We actually read the submissions and judge them. Even the poems that will ultimately be rejected are looked at on two separate occasions. We never, ever share your personal information with anyone. We do not tell everyone that they are a winner, and we will not try to sell you a gazillion different things with your wonderful poem emblazoned on them. We leave the deception to those who are better at that sort of thing.

The "Regional Winner" designation is given only to those poems that the judges feel truthfully have a chance of winning "Honorable Mention" or better in this contest. We will not lead anybody on... EVER. "Topical Winners" are poems that we liked and that we felt had something worth saying that other young people could relate to and would enjoy reading. It's just that simple really. We're all about sharing the poetry.

We will not make you famous. We will not make you a household name. You may or may not be "Poet of the Year". (Most likely, not, as there is only one.) Our goal is to share the poetry.

Our vision is that for every poem in our anthology, there will be someone, somewhere in this country, who reads it and says, "I wish I'd have written that, because that's just how I feel too" and that for every reader there will be at least one poem that they will always remember, as long as they live.

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high school contest entry procedures

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