RP High School Poetry Prize

The Rockland Poets High School Poetry Prize is an annual prize awarded to poets attending high school in Rockland County, NY. The top prize amount for 2026 is $250.

Any students that attend high schools in Rockland County NY are eligible to apply. Applicants submit two original poems and a brief personal statement about their relationship to poetry. They may also optionally include a list of dates/locations that they've read their work in public. Limit one entry per person per year.

Applications are due at midnight on April 30th. Winners are notified sometime in May. Winners will be invited to our June poetry slam to read their poetry and receive a check for $100 to $250 (depending on the number of awardees) at the very beginning of the event. 

Note that our poetry slams are open to all ages but are uncensored -- it's possible that you may hear strong/adult language or themes from other poets at the event. If this makes you or your family uncomfortable, it's completely okay to leave immediately after reading your poetry and receiving your prize money. 

Application link

Past winners:

2026

First Place: Maggie Woods, Tappan Zee High School

What You Really Want

There are people to greet

and meals to accept.

Women with blotchy faces

who will hold me close.

Even now, they knock

at my door.

I will console their sorry hearts.

I will not tell them

to leave my broken house

with its falling chimney

and cold dirt floor cellar.

But for a moment now

I lie in bed

with no tears

across my cheeks.

The sheets hold me

like I used to know.

While the thrushes outside

sing a tune I will come to recognize

far too well .

A bitter ode

to this mourning morning.

Half Magic

I am halfway home

inside a memory with fuzzy edges

I see the cover of the novel

and hear my mother’s voice

as she reads to me

late at night

but the clock is shifting, unreadable

the words are hazy

and the walls keep changing color

I am home

but not in the way I want

I am home

but only ever halfway

Second Place: Melody B., Clarkstown North Senior High School

Kitchens Heartbeat

The kitchen is the archway to conversations left unsaid

Or just long-forgotten.

Press your ears to the archaic walls

and hear whispered condolences, 

passed with pies and challah while sitting shiva. 

A muffled sob as loss drains through your body 

like a wrung out dish towel

Swipe your fingers 

across the scratched metal table

And feel the lasting crumbs of a small girl, 

too messy for her own good

A girl who sat on the too-high chairs 

and did homework with grandma after school.

Open the fridge and see the same drawer of cheese

that has lay untouched since prehistoric times. 

She dyed a strand of mom’s hair in the kitchen, 

red and rich like velvet.

Stains splatter the floor still like droplets of blood,

framing the crime scene of a sweet moment

Press your heart to the floor and feel the beating back of everybody who crossed its threshold, 

We do not eat in the kitchen,

We confess, 

and fight, 

and scrub ourselves raw. 

It is a graveyard of years passing 

It is a room cemented in a time that grew around it

Like wire that wrap so hard it suffocates

The kitchen is a

snapshot of the girl and the mom standing 

where the girl and mom before them stood

slowly expiring in time

The space between words

and there was a moment that word was all yours too. 

pigtails and glue. 

kneecaps of blue

but it had a timer that wiggled its tail 

wo tends to grow 

man on its it sail

fastening on to the dirty and wrong 

man will attach 

humming a song 

you little girl please open your hands

hold the word woman

see how she stands 

and she’ll stand upright in this space between words

finding the bees 

playing the birds 

2025  

First Place: Qazi Haider, Clarkstown North Senior High School

F.O.M.O.:

wears name brands, stays out real late,

takes from shelves cause “who’s to say?”:

seven sins, a getaway,

driving around blocks on mel–

atonin—sorry, droning,

with seven sins: brothers?

Nah, I straggles behind group;

though, we’re in the same coupe

on the way to the mall’s halls

in Pac-sun with laced, checked ones

that shake when they’re lockstepping—

though they, nor I, aren’t in

sync. I is away too. I

stays away—fooled by the cruel

lie of anxiety, I

tends to irrationalize

that belonging’s ecstasy

is I’s hand’s stroke of grace as

I, too, takes from the shelves

for the fear of missing out.

Second Place: Melody B., Clarkstown North Senior High School

And I’m sorry to the birds

And I’m sorry to the birds

The gentle creatures under god 

who swoop down, 

clip the water and clean themselves pure,

Pure are their bodies who have never done wrong, 

but we tar the feathers that sing a sweet song. 

The rising climate’s hand who snaps through the sky, 

and altered the direction in which birds could fly, and

I'm sorry to the fish who school just like me, 

clumping-together in blessed sanctity 

For we have taken your church and turned it bright red, 

and heat ‘til you swim, swim ‘til you're dead. But 

I’m sorry for the trees who sway like a prayer. 

The ones who so graciously lend us our air, 

well the tree 

standing 

tall 

might 

seem 

strong

just 

like us, 

But even the strongest will crumble to dust.

I’m sorry young girl who looks much like me, 

who never understood why we don't save the trees, 

or the fish, or the birds, or the doe or the pigs. 

So you will tell her what the problem is. 

Tell her you wanted to drive a cool car, 

or tell her you needed to cruise like a star. 

Tell her you needed the new brand new iphone,

 or tell her you had to build up your old home.

Or please dear god tell her nothing at all, 

but present your rough hand and make her stand tall.

I’m sorry to the world whose smile begins to fade, cause she’s battered and bruised, 

until a new day is made. 

2024 - A.A.L., Clarkstown South Senior High School

something about/sour cherries

she smells sweet

her toxins amidst

my brain

clouds

the anticipation of sweetness

my tongue

burns with the

blood red gush

rips to yellow teeth

bitter sour billowing

my taste buds

repulsed by

something that

no amount of

teeth-brushing

listerine gargling

the taste

of her the taste

will stay

no matter

how much i beg

i plea

for it to

go

2023 - K. Saint-Cyr, North Rockland High School

Son of  Mother Nature

His hair waved like the ocean

And his eyes were deeper, darker than space

His pimples and zits were the constellations over that night sky

Wind would gently blow out of his mouth when he whispers

Nature fights back and so did he

Though I am glad I did not decompose before I left his forest

Jaela

I never knew that I liked drag that much 

But when we were sitting in that circle

When Jaela danced over and touched my hand

I didn't clap that much right after that

Because I began to cry

This stranger had so much love for the art

And for our little queer world

A world everyone in the room could rule together

Birchwood School

Clarkstown North Senior High School

Clarkstown South Senior High School

Nanuet Senior High School

North Rockland High School

Nyack Senior High School

Pearl River High School

Ramapo High School

Spring Valley High School

Suffern Senior High School

Tappan Zee High School