Poetry Without Borders: Contest 2026
Calling all Youth!
The contest is now open for 2026
Hosted by the Atherton Library and the San Mateo Daily Journal
Hosted by the Atherton Library and the San Mateo Daily Journal
Open to all students from kindergarten to 12th grade. Any form of poem submission is allowed. There are three submission groups – Elementary School, Middle School and High School.
For full contest rules, please click here to view the Event Rules document.
View 2026 Flyer in English and SpanishDeadline: Mar 16, 2026
Watch this space for details of the Prize Ceremony to be held in April 2026
High School Winner – $150, Middle School Winner – $120, Elementary Winner – $75Contact: adigarg@poetrywithoutborders.com for any questions.
We are immensely grateful to our esteemed judges for their time and feedback. They are active members of our community and well published poets.
Poet, Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow
Aileen Cassinetto is an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and San Mateo County Poet Laureate Emerita. The co-founder of Paloma Press, she is also co-editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023), a companion to the congressionally mandated Fifth National Climate Assessment, and The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (2025), a Poets for Science anthology and companion to the first national assessment of U.S. lands, waters, and wildlife.
Learn more about Aileen →Crystal Springs Uplands School, English Teacher
Tom Diggs is the author of fiction, plays, and musicals. His novel, ROM-COM FOR DUMMIES, was published last year by NineStar Press. His play, FAIR AND DECENT, was developed by the Kennedy Center and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2008. When he’s not working on his own writing, he enjoys teaching middle schoolers to write at Crystal Springs Uplands School. Outside of the world of letters, he bakes, bikes, and keeps up with the latest technology. A lifelong learner, he attended Brown University, the University of Washington, and NYU/Tisch. He currently spends his time between San Francisco and Santa Fe and is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Learn more about Tom →Director, Stanford Center of Poetics; Professor of French and Italian Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies and of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Marisa Galvez specializes in the literature of the Middle Ages in France and Western Europe, especially the poetry and narrative literature written in Occitan and Old French. Her first book, Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2012, awarded John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America), treats what poetry was before the emergence of the modern category, “poetry”: that is, how vernacular songbooks of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries shaped our modern understanding of poetry by establishing expectations of what is a poem, what is a poet, and what is lyric poetry itself.
Learn more about Marisa →Jones Lecturer & Former Wallace Stegner Fellow, Stanford University
Jackson is the author of Winter Stranger, winner of the 2022 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. He earned his MFA at the Michener Center for Writers and is currently affiliated with Stanford’s creative writing program.
Learn more about Jackson →