Moving Words 2024 Student Contest Winners
Published on September 30, 2024
Ten student poets from Arlington Public Schools have been selected for the Moving Words Student Competition 2024. Selected from 415 entries submitted by 266 students, the ten winning poems are displayed aboard ARTbuses traversing Arlington County from October 2024 through March 2025.
Students of all ages were invited to submit poems of ten lines or less, which were selected by juror Simon Shieh. The winning poems are printed on colorful placards and displayed prominently, enlivening the ride for thousands of commuters. Winning poems also are posted on ArlingtonArts.org and will be archived on the Arlington County CommuterPage.com website.
Held each spring for Arlington Public School students, the Moving Words Student Poetry Competition is a partnership between Arlington Cultural Affairs and the Arlington Public Schools Humanities Project, with support from Arlington Transit. Moving Words supports the goals of the Humanities Project’s Pick A Poet program, which invites professional poets into APS classrooms to share their experience and love for the craft with students. Visiting poets help students explore their own creativity, insight, and intellectual curiosity through the creative writing process, and provide students an opportunity to meet and talk with professional writers. The students are then encouraged to submit their work to the Moving Words student competition.
Read the 2024 winning poems and honorable mentions.
2024 Moving Words Student Competition Winners
- A Deer in Spring by Hattie Montague (2nd Grade, Montessori Public School of Arlington)
- Untitled by Dhalia (5th Grade, Arlington Traditional School)
- Untitled by Lillian Brinkman (5th Grade, Arlington Traditional School)
- Untitled by Jimmy Daley (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Nina Jaeckel (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- please leave a message after the tone by Blue (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Ambika S. (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- For the postponed by Julian Osmanov-Fitzgerald (12th Grade, Wakefield High School)
- Public Transit by Samantha Phipps (10th Grade, Wakefield High School)
2024 Moving Words Student Competition Honorable Mentions
- London by Alina Ahmad (2nd Grade, Campbell Elementary School)
- Summer Stream by Liana Mitchell (2nd Grade, Montessori Public School of Arlington)
- Untitled by Lucas Young (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Susannah Holt (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Marwa Marhrim (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Ella Schaufelberger (8th Grade, Dorothy Hamm Middle School)
- Untitled by Kira Kettler (10th Grade, Washington-Liberty High School)
- Untitled by Julian Osmanov-Fitzgerald (12th Grade, Wakefield High School)
- Untitled by Mauro Fonseca Urrutia (10th Grade, Wakefield High School)
About Juror Simon Shieh:
Simon Shieh is a poet, writer, and educator, and the author of Master (Sarabande Books, 2023). His poems and essays are published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Guernica, and The Yale Review, among others, and have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellowship and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
About Arlington Cultural Affairs
Arlington Cultural Affairs, a division of Arlington Economic Development, delivers public activities and programs as Arlington Arts. The division’s mission is to create, support, and promote the arts, connecting artists and community to reflect the diversity of Arlington. Cultural Affairs provides material support to artists and arts organizations in the form of grants, facilities and theater technology; integrates award-winning public art into the County’s built environment; and presents high-quality performing, literary, visual and new media programs across the County.