A Citywide Poetry Contest for LA Students & Teachers
Presented by Get Lit – Words Ignite
About the Contest
If I Awaken in Los Angeles is more than an album—it's a love letter to the city from the voices that define it. Now, it's your turn.Get Lit invites 6th–12th grade students and separately their teachers from across Los Angeles County to respond to the album through original spoken word poetry—and compete for over $40,000 in prizes. Finalists will be selected through both a professional panel of judges and a People’s Choice vote via Get Lit’s Uni(verse) platform.
Contest runs: September 29 – November 21, 2025
Winners announced: December 1, 2025
how to enter
Step 1: Claim a Poem
- Teachers register on Uni(verse) and create a classroom.
- Their students join the class and listen to If I Awaken in Los Angeles.
- Each student claims a poem that speaks to them and prepares a response.
- Teachers (who wish to compete) do the same through a separate contest for teachers.
Step 2: Submit Your Poem
- Teachers register on Uni(verse) and create a classroom.
- Their students join the class and listen to If I Awaken in Los Angeles.
- Each student claims a poem that speaks to them and prepares a response.
- Teachers (who wish to compete) do the same through a separate contest for teachers.
Step 3: Vote
- Teachers register on Uni(verse) and create a classroom.
- Their students join the class and listen to If I Awaken in Los Angeles.
- Each student claims a poem that speaks to them and prepares a response.
- Teachers (who wish to compete) do the same through a separate contest for teachers.
PRIZES
For Students- 10 People’s Choice Winners – $1,000 each
- 10 Judges’ Winners – $1,000 each
- All student winners will be published in the anthology Awakening Los Angeles
For Teachers
- Top teacher (most student submissions): $2,000
- 9 additional teachers with the most submissions (minimum 100 students): $1,000 each
- 10 teacher poems selected by judges: $1,000 each
About the Album
If I Awaken in Los Angeles features poetry and music that spotlight neighborhoods across the city—from Leimert Park to Malibu, Boyle Heights to Koreatown, Little Tokyo to Watts.
Featured artists include:
- Luis Rodriguez (LA Poet Laureate)
- Dante Basco (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Hook)
- Joy Harjo (Three-time U.S. Poet Laureate)
- Samantha Rios (LA Youth Poet Laureate)
- Cheech Marin (Grammy Award Winner)
- Jackson Browne (Grammy-nominated)
- Music by Grammy-winner Derrick Hodge
This album is a tribute to Los Angeles—and now, it’s your turn to respond.
Get Involved
Whether you're an educator looking to inspire your classroom or a student ready to speak your truth, this is your chance to celebrate your community and share your story.
Your block. Your story. Your voice.
Questions?
Reach out to:
Diane Luby Lane, Executive Director — diane@getlit.org
Monique Mitchell, Director of Communications — monique@getlit.org
Morning Keynote:
WHAT IT IS & WILL BE
As poets, we are often tasked with paying deep attention to the world and describing what we witness. But what do we do when witnessing the world starts to take a toll on us? What happens when we shift our attention to worlds that don’t (yet) exist? Franny discusses their journey into speculative poetry and how bringing elements of sci-fi and magical realism helped them start to explore what writer Toni Cade Bambara meant when she said: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”
Afternoon Workshop: WRITING SPECULATIVE POETRY
In this workshop, we will look at several examples of poems that imagine, propose, speculate, or wish for alternate worlds. We will experiment with the speculative mode, rewrite narratives, and try out some world-building in our poems. Come ready to play!
Lunchtime Keynote: TOWARD A POETICS OF INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY
Poetry—the poet Carl Phillips writes in his essay, Muscularity and Eros: On Syntax—is patterned language. Patterned language reveals patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior in an individual life. Can writing a poem help a poet more honestly understand their life? Can revising a poem help a poet change their life?
Using “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “How It Felt” by Sharon Olds, this talk will think through the poetics, and politics, of writing toward investigation and discovery. It will consider how a poem can produce new knowledge about human experience, and how a poem committed to radical freedom should, perhaps, begin with a question about human experience—a quest into unknown territory and the Territory of the Unknown.
Afternoon Workshop: TELL IT LIKE IT IS
While what we have heard is true—that we should "show" and "not tell"—sometimes we have to tell it like it is. In this generative writing workshop, we will read "Autobiography of Eve" by Ansel Elkins and define the "it" as the discovery the poet makes about the emotional or psychological landscape of their lived experience. We will look at how the act of discovery rather than the act of announcement must always be a priority in poetry, and we will see how fundamental elements of poetry—such as syntax, received form, and the image—can be used to show AND tell the discovery "like it is." Finally, we will write new poems that demonstrate what we will have learned together and hold a Q&A that invites any questions poets might have about their poems, poetry, and poetry writing.
Afternoon Workshop: THE POETICS OF SURPRISE
Truth and logic are important parts of narrative, but they're not the only way to move a poem forward. What happens when we let sound lead the way? What revelations might we find by allowing our senses to lead us through a poem? In this workshop we will practice writing in ways that delight and surprise us while writing--and hopefully, surprise and delight the reader, too.
