We are pleased to announce the winners of the Fourth Annual 1455 Young Poets Contest. The theme for this year’s contest is Freedom, and the guidelines requested the poems to reflect on or react to the contemporary sociopolitical and cultural environment (including but not limited to #BLM, #MeToo, COVID, etc.)
Once again, we received an astonishing variety of poems, and as was the case in previous years, the overall quality of the writing exceeded all expectations. On one hand, this made for some difficult decisions; on the other hand, based on this sample of young writers, the future of poetry will be diverse, passionate, and brilliant.
The judges (1455 Founder and Executive Director Sean Murphy, and co-judge Maia Siegel) admired the range of voices and quality of expression, but—like previous years!—some excruciating choices had to be made. As such, it was with no small relief that we had consensus regarding the ultimate finalists.
GRAND PRIZE WINNERS
$1,000 Award per poet
Category One: Ages 13-18
Elizabeth Keller
Elizabeth Keller is a senior at Interlochen Arts Academy and is from Vancouver, Washington. Her short stories and poetry have been published in Crashtest and The Interlochen Review. In her free time, she enjoys bad jokes, hugging her cats, and trying to learn to play the pennywhistle.
