LYRICAL LANGUAGE LAB
1ST ANNUAL FREE VERSE POETRY CONTEST *for kidlit
THEME: Summer Snapshot
Leap
into a cold dark mirror
rocket up up up
and guzzle air
on your back, lily-pad flat, you float
watch treetops
swish and sway in slow motion
Tangle-weeds
tickle your toes
the ghost of a fin
glides by
double-winged dragonflies
mistake your belly
for an island
Minutes
melt into minnows
hours unwind
around cloud clocks
when you can’t tell
where your skin ends
and the water begins,
slink onto a boulder
and laze in the sun
island side up
© 2024 Sally Stanton
Sally is an artist and writer living in Maine who loves to swim in lakes. As an elementary school librarian, she loved sharing poems and supporting students writing their own poetry and prose. She holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People from the Solstice Program at Lasell University. Her paintings have been exhibited in group and solo shows around New England including the Portland Museum of Art, Waterfall Arts, and the Harlow Center for the Arts. Her middle-grade manuscript earned a full scholarship to the Highlights Foundation week-long writing workshops and her poetry has been published in Cricket Magazine. She is a member of SCBWI.
IG: @sal.stanton
If ever a poem fit a theme, Sally’s “Swimmin’ Hole” is it. We love this summer snapshot and the sense of solitude and being one with nature that it evokes (“when you can’t tell/where your skin ends/and the water begins”). Sally puts us right there in the cool lake and then dazzles us with imagery like “the ghost of a fin,” “cloud clocks,” and the gorgeous “minutes melt into minnows.” SIGH! We also love the callback to the tummy-island at the end. This is a tight, well-crafted poem.
Tonight’s the night,
the stay-up night,
the once-a-year, sky’s-clear,
race-you-out-the-door
night.
In the park, everything
green,
brown,
white by day
is blue in the not-yet,
not-quite night that,
tonight,
I am a part of.
Bats
flap
flap
above the path. Up ahead
my sister laughs,
head thrown back,
an attack of
we-should-be-in-bed
giggles
as we skip through
the might-need-a-flashlight,
calling-all-fireflies
night.
Blue grows darker—
“Quick, let’s get there!”
POP!
POP!
BOOM!
Sky lights up,
bright streams down
in the glad-you’re-here,
clap-clap-cheer
summer night.
© 2024 Korena Di Roma Howley
Korena is a freelance writer and editor and reports on science news and education for multiple outlets. While at National Geographic, she encountered numerous tales of resilience, innovation, and discovery from explorers and storytellers whose work inspired her as she ventured into the world of children’s literature. Korena’s debut picture book, Sarang Saves the School, with illustrator Joowon Oh, will be released by Candlewick in spring 2025, while her second picture book, A Hanbok for Hana, also with Candlewick and illustrated by Jaime Kim, will be published in 2026. She lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with her husband and son.
Web: korenahowley.com
IG: @KDRHowley
X: @KDRHowley
Bluesky: @korena.bsky.social
photo credit: Autumn Hefner Photography
We love Korena’s playful language that gives her child narrator a distinct voice, full of anticipation and adventure. Her deft use of compound adjectives (“we-should-be-in-bed giggles”) adds to the narrator’s giddiness and keeps the reader moving along, picking up the pace as we get closer to those fireworks. Sound devices like consonance, assonance, and onomatopoeia make this poem a delight to read out loud. In this summer snapshot, Korena perfectly captures the excitement of a child on their special “stay-up night.”
hallelujah, sun!
you have eaten up
leaf and land, sand and snow
ocean vapor, lava flow
now your belly
glows so full and fat
that you have to lie back
in your blue hammock
lie back with your many arms
thrown wide and just shine
© 2024 Heidi Mordhorst
After 35 years as a classroom teacher and early-years Language & Literature specialist, Heidi continues to teach poetry reading and writing workshops for all ages from 4 to adult as a Teaching Artist with the Maryland State Arts Council. Heidi’s poetry and other writing appears in numerous poetry anthologies and journals as well as in her own two collections of poetry for young people: Squeeze: Poems from a Juicy Universe and Pumpkin Butterfly: Poems from the Other Side of Nature, both published by Wordsong/Boyds Mills.
Web: whispershoutwritingworkshop.net
Blog: myjuicylittleuniverse.blogspot.com
IG: @heidi_mordhorst_whispershout
FB: @HeidiMordhorst
Bluesky: @HeidiMordhorst.bsky.social
We say “hallelujah, Heidi!” for this morsel of pure joy. We adore the extended metaphor of the sun as a ravenous creature, eating up the landscape until it “glows so full and fat”–what an image! Heidi’s masterful use of sound devices like occasional rhyme (“leaf and land, sand and snow”), consonance (…lie back/in your blue hammock”), and repetition (“lie back”) adds to the drama and makes us want to throw our arms wide and proclaim this poem from the rooftops.
(alphabetical)
Sole survivor,
the little queen sleeps
in an old vole hole,
her striped fur iced
by months of night,
only royal antifreeze
keeping her breathing—
until
sun
tugs buds up,
thaws tundra deep
to tap her
like the gentlest
tuning fork—
She shivers her wings warm,
revs her summer hum
above
where willow nectar waits
to feed the tiny eggs
within her,
and yellow poppies
cup light,
singing
come, bask.
© 2024 Elizabeth Kuelbs
Elizabeth Kuelbs writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for children and adults. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and you can find her work for young readers in What Is Hope?, Things We Feel, Tyger Tyger Magazine, Spider, Cricket, The Dirigible Balloon, and elsewhere. Elizabeth loves spotting bumblebees on the hiking trails near her Los Angeles home.
Web: elizabethkuelbs.com
IG: @elizkuelbs
X: @elizabethkuelbs
On the Julyest of days,
we tug swimsuits over sticky skin.
Add frayed jean shorts,
torn tees,
last year’s sneakers
with creek sand in the toes.
Lugging inner tubes—their burning bodies
sucking in sunshine
whiffing out rubber—
we plod
plod
plod
down the 54th Street hill.
Down to moist, muddy air
where sun-dapples play on pebbled shallows
and rapids sing
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
Gurgling water seeps through canvas,
tickling our toes.
We steer our tubes toward the middle,
then hop in
and let the cool, swirling current
carry
us
a w a y.
© 2024 Sara Matson
Sara has published more than 175 stories, articles, poems, and crafts in children’s magazines. She took Renée’s Lyrical Language Lab course in 2022 and has loved writing poetry ever since. Growing up, she spent many summer afternoons inner tubing down the Minnehaha Creek near her home in Minnesota.
Web: saramatson.com
she loved him like she loved summer
knowing it wouldn’t last forever
but throwing herself into it
like taking a running leap
into a still lake in June
their love was sweet and messy
like watermelon juice
dripping down chins and fingers
the sound of their laughter
tossed in the crashing waves
the touch of his hand
like sunshine on her shoulders
his eyes bluer than the July sky
smile bright as fireworks on the Fourth
his kisses like cravings
for ice cream cones in August
his coconut scent lingering
that summer
he was everything
when autumn arrived
she cried.
© 2024 Sarah Meade
Sarah Meade’s poetry and stories have been published in Hop to It: Poems to Get You Moving (Pomelo, 2020), Babybug, Ladybug, Highlights Hello, High Five, Phoenix English, The Toy, Little Thoughts Press, The Dirigible Balloon, Poetry as Promised, and more. She’s a PAL member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, co-host of #KidLitZombieWeek, Madness! Poetry authlete, Little Free Library steward, Girl Scout leader, mom of two, and constant reader.
Inside my cool
school cafeteria
I weave cotton loops
of swimming pool blue
and cloud-puff white,
tigerlily burst, firework red,
bikeride pink streaked
with purple popsicle.
The metal pegs of a square loom
stand patient
for my slow-learning fingers
as I whisper–
over, under,
over, under
weaving potholders
for Mom’s winter kitchen
when today is just
this memory.
© 2024 Linda Mitchell
Linda is a family girl, kitty-cat mama, and middle school librarian. When she isn’t chasing literal and metaphorical cats she enjoys writing before sunrise and dreams of publishing her work in the form of a book someday. She’s really taken to mixed media art with old papers and discarded books, and even though she’s not much into social media these days you can find her work at her Poetry Friday blog and on Instagram.
We run through summer;
lakeside, in parks, along beaches,
but today we run
through a field of giants.
Our faces to the lemon sun,
we track it
across the cotton candy sky.
We flock like the birds
through the fresh green stems,
swarm like the bees
to the dinner-plate heads,
curl like fuzzy caterpillars
in the sleepy summer heat.
We cut down our favorites
with knowing shears,
take vasefuls of yellow
for golden summer homes.
As the sunflowers
wilt, fade, dry…
we dream of
a field full of summer
for next year,
and a pocketful of snacks
to see us into fall.
© 2024 Anne Reilly
Anne is from Scotland, now living on the Northern California coast where she loves to whale watch, beachcomb and stargaze. She loves writing quiet, lyrical picture books and poetry, and is about to revise her first YA novel in verse.
Facebook: @AnneReilly
IG: @wurdburd
CENTER FIELD
I’m listenin’.
I know my job.
Nothin’s gettin’ by me.
In the dugout door,
Coach lazy-leans,
eyes almost closed.
We’ve got a snooker going
when the slugger comes to bat.
I’m listenin’.
Chatter’s pickin’ up.
Only once I glance her way.
Southpaw.
So I sashay
a might
toward right.
I’m listenin’.
Think about it, batter.
I’m so little.
Maybe coach played me out of pity.
(Maybe not)
Go on, hit it to me.
I’m not lookin’ your way.
I’m just watchin’ these moths meander.
CRACK
Cheetah legs spring.
Mine!
No! Lost in the lights!
There—
Dive!
That’s three.
© 2024 Janet Robertson
Kidd Wadsworth creates. When she creates with words, she loves easy-to-understand poetry, dragons, sentient plants, wildly free people, and hope-filled endings.
Web: kiddwadsworth.com
© 2024 Lisa Roullard
Lisa resides in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she enjoys a view of the Wasatch Mountains on her neighborhood walks. Her poems for children can be found in The Dirigible Balloon, Little Thoughts Press, The Toy, and Parakeet.
X: @lisaroullard
IG: @lroullard
The judges chose your poems out of hundreds of entries!
