Poets reading at various open mic nights hosted by The Copper Courier at Meraki Kava Bar in north Phoenix (Photos by Jessica Swarner)
The 2024 poetry contest winner will be offered a featured reader spot at our July 3 open mic in Phoenix.
It’s time for The Copper Courier’s second annual poetry contest!
I’ve been hosting poetry open mics with Copper for nearly two years now, and seeing how much talent we have in our state inspired me to start the contest last year.
Our debut competition last summer was so much fun. We received 33 entries from readers across the state, and we loved reading all of their moving poems.
Trinity Miracle of Phoenix, then age 22, was the winner, with a video of her reading her poem “Beautiful Black Voyager.”
RELATED: Meet the winners of the first-ever Copper Courier poetry contest
She served as a featured reader for one of our open mics last year, and she also read a poem to kick off our fourth anniversary party last October!
The runners up were Mark Coryell, 67, of Ahwatukee and Hannah Levin, 14, of Tucson.
The 2024 contest
This year we want to see even more people send us their work.
The 2024 winner will be offered a featured reader spot at our July 3 open mic at Meraki Kava Bar in north Phoenix, and the top three entries will be published on our social media channels and in our newsletter so all of our readers can hear their work.
Your poem doesn’t have to follow a certain structure or hit on a certain theme, but we will be looking for creativity, uniqueness, lyricism, memorable imagery, heartfelt emotions, depth—all of the things that make a poem moving and unforgettable. But they don’t have to be completely serious—humor goes a long way for memorability!
So if you have any work you’re willing to share with us, we’d be more than happy to read it. Submit your poem—either as a written piece or a video that lasts under 90 seconds—using this Google form.
We’re excited to hear what you have to say. Good luck!
Author
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