All poems submitted for consideration must be original, unpublished, and short.
Short is key. No epics, please.
Meter, rhyme, free verse? Haiku, limerick, quatrain, sonnet? The choice is yours.
Entries should make a point about language: grammar, usage, typos, writing, editing — whatever inspires you think captures the spirit of National Grammar Day.
Who can enter
Everyone is invited to participate. You do not need to be a member of ACES or work as an editor. The winning entry will be selected by a panel of judges that includes the previous year’s winner, along with language and poetry experts. ACES administers the award; it does not decide the winners.
That said, we encourage you to share your entries on your favorite social media platforms. If you tag #ACES and #GrammarDay we will be able to find you and reshare.
When to submit
The submission form is open Feb. 15-28. The link will be available here during that window.
Learning the results
ACES will announce the winner on, naturally, March 4, in a post on its news channel and in its social media channels. The winning poem will be included in the story, along with the runner-up entries.
Words have power. In times of injustice, oppression, and uncertainty, words become more than just ink on a page—they become weapons, shields, and bridges. They can challenge unfair systems, inspire people to take action, and bring communities together. Writing and reading for the resistance means using stories, poems, and books to fight injustice and create a better future. Throughout history, people have used words to stand up against oppression—and today, we can do the same.
Writing as a Way to Fight Back
Writing can be a powerful tool in the fight for justice. To write is to document, to bear witness, and to refuse erasure. The act of storytelling itself can be a radical act, especially when it amplifies the voices of those who are silenced. It allows people to share their truths, educate others, and imagine a better world. Writing for the resistance can include:
Telling Untold Stories – Write about important events or people that history books ignore.
Challenging Misinformation – Speak out against lies and rewriting stories that are unfair or incomplete.
Creating New Worlds – Use fiction, poetry, or essays to imagine new possibilities that envision a just world.
Providing a Platform – Elevate marginalized voices, offering them space to share their truths.
Reading as a Form of Resistance
Reading isn’t just about learning—it can be a way to resist oppression. What we read shapes how we see the world, so choosing books wisely is important. Some ways reading can be an act of resistance include:
Reading Banned Books – Books that are censored often contain ideas that challenge powerful systems.
Learning from Activists and Leaders – Reading about people who fought for justice in the past can teach us how to do the same today.
Supporting Diverse Authors – Seek out authors whose voices are often ignored by mainstream publishing. Choosing books by writers from different backgrounds helps bring new voices into the conversation.
Sharing Knowledge – Share books, discuss ideas, and create spaces where literature fuels action. Talking about books with others can spread important ideas and inspire others to act.
How You Can Take Action
If you want to use reading and writing to create change, here are some ways to start:
Join or Start a Book Club – Read books that challenge systems of oppression and discuss them with friends.
Write and Share Your Ideas – Whether through social media, blogs, or poetry, use your words to stand up for what’s right.
Support Independent Bookstores & Libraries – These places often carry books that challenge unfair systems.
Document What’s Happening – Keep a journal, write about current events, or interview people to make sure important stories aren’t forgotten.
Resistance is an ongoing effort, and literature—whether through reading or writing—has always been a vital part of that struggle. Words have changed the world before, and they can do it again. By reading and writing with purpose, we can stand up against injustice and help create a better future.
What books have inspired you to take action? What stories still need to be told? Share your thoughts and let’s keep the conversation going!
Books About the Power of Words & Resistance
For Middle & High School Readers
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi – A powerful, engaging look at how racist ideas have shaped history and how we can challenge them.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – A novel about police violence, activism, and finding your voice in the face of injustice.
Internment by Samira Ahmed – A dystopian novel about a near-future America where Muslim Americans are sent to internment camps, and a young girl fights back.
Maus by Art Spiegelman – A graphic novel that tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes of the author’s father, using animals to represent different groups.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson – A memoir in verse about growing up Black in America and the power of storytelling.
For Adult Readers (But Still Accessible)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin – A powerful collection of essays about race and justice in America.
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A short but powerful book about gender equality.
1984 by George Orwell – A classic novel about government control, censorship, and the fight for truth.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston – A story of a Black woman’s journey to find her own voice in a society that tries to silence her.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – A dystopian novel about a future where a theocratic government strips women of their rights, reducing them to roles based on reproduction.
Poetry & Essays for Resistance
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine – A mix of poetry and essays that explore race, identity, and resistance.
Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur – Poetry about survival, resilience, and healing from oppression.
The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman – The poem that was read at President Biden’s inauguration, full of hope and resistance.
I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina – A novel in verse about police violence and the impact of activism.
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu – A novel about identity, immigration, and reclaiming personal and historical narratives.
February is Valentine’s Day month. Instead of trying to send everyone Christmas and New Year’s cards, I like to surprise friends with Valentine’s Day cards. My handmade cards feature words as well as images. So why call them cards at all? They are actually Visual Poems. And because they are made from bits and pieces of collected words, colored paper and illustrations glued onto paper, they are also Collage Poems.
Try it. Once you created a few, you may become hooked. Many artists gravitate towards working in more than one medium. Visual art and poetry work well together. If you desire to be published, a market exists for creative work which combines the two mediums of visual art and words. I will providea list of publications at the end of this article. But first, let’s get started with a little inspiration.
Assembling the materials is part of the fun.
Valentine’s Day Origins
The name Valentine comes from Saint Valentine, and there are three men who are recognized as Saints by the Catholic Church. The most popular Valentine story, according to my research, is the one about the priest who performed secret marriages in opposition to Emperor Claudius II who ordered that all his soldiers remain single. Who the actual St. Valentine was is open to debate. Maybe February 14th is the approximate date of one of the martyred St. Valentines’ funerals, but it is remarkably close to the Roman fertility festival Lupercalia, once celebrated on the Ides of February ( February 15th). In some Roman villages it is said that young men and women were matched up as lovers for a year in an effort to produce more children. A day that honored love and passion, in England and France February 14thwas the start of the birds’ mating season.
The tradition of exchanging cards and love tokens is thought to begin in the middle of the 18th century. By the 19th century, the mass production of printed cards made Valentines’ cards even more popular. Gloves and handkerchiefs were two personal items lovers often gave to one another during the Victorian era. Flowers—pressed or fresh, as well as lines of verse given to our Valentine follow the romantic tradition of conveying ardor for those we adore.
Collage Poem by Nadja Maril. This collage takes lines from several well-known poems and integrates them into a collage of images and shapes connected to love.
Collage
The word collage comes from the French verb coller, meaning to paste or glue. In visual art, a collage is comprised of pieces of paper, cloth or other gathered materials arranged and permanently attached to a surface. Old photos, advertising flyers, ticket stubs, magazine illustrations; are some typical collage materials. As a teenager I’d collect shells, dried seaweed, bits of sea glass to glue on to a flat piece of weathered wood; another type of collage. Whether you use buttons, lace, tissue paper, bits of colored plastic, feathers or fur- the possibilities really are infinite.
Now, think of a collage of words. Instead of collecting physical items collect words, phrases, entire articles that resonate with you. While modernist artists in the early 20th century were creating collages of shapes and colors, Avant-garde groups that included Surrealists and Dadaists took the form to another level by including language. Tristan Tzara famously advocated a “cut-up” method of composition, involving cutting out words from a newspaper and pulling them out of a hat to create a poem. Whether you take excerpts from a political speech, a nursery rhyme or a popular song, by incorporating a medley of sources you are creating a collage poem.
Take another step to combine a visual collage with a literary collage and you have a hybrid, a poem that provides a visual and verbal experience. Whether you want to call it a collage poem, a merging of two art forms or an awesome Valentine’s Day Card—that’s up to you.
Publications that Publish Work that Combine Images and Words
If you need a different sort of Valentine’s Day gift, not the typical candy or flowers, considering purchasing a poetry chapbook and sending it to a friend. At Old Scratch Press we have published five chapbooks thus far, all under $9, with more to come. Take some time out of your day for some quiet reflection and share the love. Whoever started the idea of a day celebrating our connection to one another, let’s try and keep it going.
Nadja Maril is the author of Recipes from my Garden, Old Scratch Press, September 2024. Nadja Maril’s short stories, poems and essays have been published in dozens of small online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review,and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM. A former newspaper columnist and magazine editor, she writes a weekly blog and you can visit her website at www.Nadjamaril.com.
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So confused. Isn’t a voice linked to speaking, singing, and screaming? What does a voice have to do with writing? What the fu** Robert?
A “writing voice” refers to the unique style and personality a writer expresses through their writing, which is a combination of their vocabulary, tone, sentence structure, and perspective, essentially how their individual personality comes across on the page.
Most poetry magazine acceptance rates are about 2.4%. In order to increase your chance of publication acceptance success, create a writing voice and then target publications that have published work with your voice within the last two-years.
A writing acceptance rate is like a baseball player’s batting average (BA). Josh Gibson’s 1946 BA of 37.2% is the highest career Major League Baseball BA.
Josh Gibson
My poetry voice profile:
Style: experimental
Themes: masculinity, sexual orientation, sin/virtue, dystopia
Forms: visual poetry, free-verse, Japanese Haiku/Mondo, sonnet, and pantoum
Devices: sound (rhyme, alliteration, assonance), duality, homonyms, multiple-word-reversals, and end-titles
CREATING a WRITING VOICE
Oh NO Mr. Robert, an assignment is coming. Sir and madam, it is, I cannot lie.
A sleepless night, 3/14/1996, yours truly obsessed compulsed, to translate four of his favorite poets to a gay style: Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, John Berryman, and Dorothy Parker.
What I did for each poet:
Select a favorite poem
Analyze and document what the poem is (theme, form, devices) and why you like it
Read the poem out loud
Make an audio recording of your reading
Handwrite the poem
Type the poem
Translate the poem to your style
Place the original poem and translation side by side
What was the outcome impact of yours truly doing this exercise:
In 1997, a follow-up creation of a visual poem that translates Dorothy Parker was included in art show in the District of Columbia
Self-discovery that my style is experimental and an integration of one of the poets studied: Robert Frost and another poet: Dr. Seuss
More Voice Discovery guidelines: make diverse selections
Select work written in different time eras: 50% 1,800 or earlier, 50% 1,900 and later
Gender: 50% men, 50% woman
Style (traditional vs experimental): at least 1 experimental
Discover your writing voice and use it!
Yours Truly is:
Robert Fleming, a contributing editor of Old Scratch Press
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By Virginia Watts, Founding Member of the Old Scratch Press Collective
Many people have heard of title The United States Poet Laureate, official title Poetry Laureate Consultant in Poetry, but they do not know much about this position. The Poet Laureate serves for an eight-month term running from October to May, elected by The Librarian of Congress. Traditionally a poet will hold this title for two terms. In choosing the recipient of this prestigious title, the Librarian consults with experts in the field of poetry as well as former Poet Laureates. Additionally, suggestions from the general public are accepted.
The Poet Laureate only has two officials duties they must perform, two readings at the beginning and end of their term. The idea is that each Poet Laureate should be given the space and freedom to decide for themselves how they can use their role to encourage people throughout the nation to read, write and develop an appreciation for the art of poetry. The Poet Laureate receives a stipend of $35,000 and $5000 for travel expenses. Prior the 1986, the Poet Laureates were known as Consultants in Poetry. The well known poets Robert Frost and Gwendolyn Brooks were Consultants. Since 1986, there have been 24 Poet Laureates, Louise Gluck and Ted Kooser among them.
So, what have some of our Poet Laureates done during their tenure to spread the love of poetry?
In 1997, Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate, put out an open call for people to share their favorite poem. Many Americans sent poems. Poems came flooding in from all ages, all states, from people of diverse backgrounds and interests. Pinsky’s call set off a domino effect leading to reading of favorite poems in hundreds of cities and towns.
Gwendolyn Brooks is well known for her focus on elementary school students. Early learning about poetry and writing it is bound to foster a lifelong love of the art form.
Joseph Brodsky thought the best way to have people experience poetry is for them to find free samples of it in their everyday lives and places, such as airports and hotel rooms.
Billy Collins published an anthology inspired by his time serving as the United State Poet Laureate. “Poetry 180” makes it easy for high school students to read or hear one poem each day during their school year. Collins is often quoted as believing that poetry is a kind of social engagement, that a poem should feel like it reaches out and invites the reader inside.
Rita Dove brought writers with a focus on African diaspora together. Maxine Kumin focused on shining a light on the works of women writers and Joy Harjo, the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, was the first Native American to hold this honor.
Our current Poet Laureate is Ada Limon. She is from a Mexican American background and grew up in California. As part of her position, she penned a poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission. Her poem is engraved in her handwriting on a metal plate aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft. This spacecraft launched in 2024 and will enter the Juniper system in 2030. Here is Limon’s gorgeous piece. She is one of the must-read poets of our times, well deserving of the title of United States Poet Laureate.
“In Praise of Mystery” by Ada Limón was released at the Library of Congress on June 1, 2023, in celebration of the poem’s engraving on NASA’s Europa Clipper, scheduled to launch in October of 2024. Copyright Ada Limón, 2023. All rights reserved. The reproduction of this poem may in no way be used for financial gain.
About the author: Virginia Watts is the author of poetry and stories found in Epiphany, CRAFT, The Florida Review, Reed Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Words & Whispers, Sky Island Journal among others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and four times for Best of the Net. Her debut short story collection Echoes from The Hocker House won third place in the 2024 Feathered Quill Book Awards.
Virginia Watts grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania and spent summer vacations in the Endless Mountains of Sullivan County with her Quaker grandparents. Many of her stories and poems revolve around small town life and rural roadways that are not always what they seem.
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Nadja Maril, author of RECIPES FROM MY GARDEN, is one of the founders of Old Scratch Press
The Editors of Instant Noodles Literary Review, published three times a year, have announced the themes for 2025: Current, Sanctuary and Gravy.
Edited by members of the Old Scratch Short Form Collective who have volunteered their time, submissions are free. The Instant Noodles submission box which you can access through Duotrope is filling up fast.
While artists and writers selected for publication receive no financial renumeration, the publishers and editors do their utmost to promote the work in each issue. Instant Noodles nominates for industry prizes, Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. One of the magazine’s promotions is a zoom reading, giving contributors around the world a chance to meet.
Published three times a year, the magazine is posted online for everyone to read. One of the biggest reasons work gets rejected, is that writers don’t follow submission guidelines and familiarize themselves with the publication.
In addition to Visual Art and Multimedia Creations, the magazine publishes Prose & Poetry
Instant Noodles focuses on SHORT pieces. Short work 500 and 750 words in length can be powerful. If you are submitting prose, whether is it hybrid, nonfiction, or fiction, the word limit is 1000 words or less.
All work must be original and must belong to the author. Works that have been previously published will not be considered. Stories must be complete and self-contained (i.e., do not submit chapters of a larger work).
NOTE: Accepted works will be published as submitted without editing; as such, in addition to the originality of the work itself, we are looking for manuscripts that are clean and press ready. Be sure to review your grammar, spelling, tenses, proper punctuation, and other general rules of the written word before hitting “Send.” Work should be submitted through Duotrope as a Microsoft Word file (when it is poetry, drama, NF or fiction) as 12-point New Times Roman, double-spaced (single-spaced for poetry submissions). All other types of work have details as to their file types on the Duotrope page.
Connect to the Theme
The Editors request that submissions should have a connection to one of the themes for which they were submitted: Current, Sanctuary and Gravy—and labelled as such.
They are looking for more submissions in the categories of creative nonfiction, drama, multimedia and visual art.
“When I’m reading poetry submissions for Instant Noodles,” Says contributing Poetry Editor Gabby Gilliam, “I’m looking for poems that concisely fit our theme and resonate. I want lines that linger in my mind long after I’m finished reading.
As a contributing editor, I suggest it is never too early to start contemplating ideas associated with our spring theme, current, as well as the subsequent themes that follow. What ideas does the word current evoke for you? Are you thinking about being hip, cool and up on “current” events or are you traveling on an air “current.” Where does the word take you?
Try writing a story about yourself, something you observed, or something entirely imaginary. Create a video, a picture, combine two mediums.
Work should be publication ready
Do not submit until your piece is ready. Have you read your piece out loud and checked for misspellings and grammar mistakes? Does it fit the theme and are you ready to share it with the world?
The deadline for the spring issue with the theme Current is March 16th. We look forward to reading your work!
Many people are familiar with the haiku, an unrhymed form of poetry that dates to 17th Century Japan. It consists of three lines and observes a strict five, seven, five syllable count. Traditionally this form of poetry was about nature, often seasonal change captured in a moment of time. Matsu Basho is considered the be the haiku master who brought haiku into its place as a serious poetic form.
Here is one of his well know poems.
An old silent pond . . .
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
People may be less aware of Western or American haiku which is often not as strict in form but nevertheless mirrors the traditional haiku. The reason for a more relaxed rule on syllable count is that the syllables in Japanese don transfer smoothly to English. Some famous poets known for American haiku are Amy Lowell, Sonia Sanchez and Ezra Pound.
Jack Kerousc
Then there is Jack Kerouac who wrote thousands of haiku and often included them in his correspondence and novels. Kerouac was a serious Buddhist who credited composing haiku with sharpening his mind. He was drawn to the idea of keeping poetry simple without trickery. Here is Jack Kerouac reading some of his Western haiku: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMwAtOom7CA
The allure of the haiku form rests in showing the beauty in the ordinary, in the belief that simple moments should be captured and preserved. It’s fun to draft haiku. People are often surprised by how much they enjoy it. Some tips: Keep a notebook with you to jot down observations, ideas, those little, unexpected life events that none of us can predict. When you have something you want to write about, do it. Don’t worry if your idea seems silly. Write about what inspires you and don’t look back or question the inspiration. For a first drafting session, try grouping words in a loose 5 -7-5 format. Don’t try to be perfect or overthink this part. Go for flow, rhyme secondary to an honest reflection of what inspired you. The next step is to put your draft on the back burner. This helps with all forms of writing. After drafting, put a temporary distance between you and your draft. As Jack says:
Nightfall—
too dark to read the page,
Too cold.
—Jack Kerouac
In a day or two return and rework as necessary. Look for awkward syllables or weak word choices. Most of all, trust your gut. If the haiku represents what you wanted to capture and keep then you’ve done it! Bravo! Drafting haiku is wonderfully addicting and rewarding. It’s like a bag of chips. You won’t stop at one.
Virginia Watts is a member of the Old Scratch Press Poetry and Short Form Collective and the author of Echoes from the Hocker House.
October is a sports lover’s dream. Most of the major leagues are in full swing, from the NBA, NFL to the NHL. There are college football games every weekend, and even the crisp Fall air makes it feel like football weather.
So what does this have to do with poetry?
There are some cases, perhaps uncommon, where sports and poetry intersect. While in school, I was introduced to the excellent baseball-related poem “Casey at the Bat” by the poet Ernest Lawrence Thayer. From the roar of the crowd to the “Strike!” being called by the umpire, Thayer does a remarkable job of transporting the reader to that fateful match in Mudville. The poem culminates with perhaps its most famous line: “But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.”
In college my friends and I would play pickup basketball on the courts on campus. These were disorganized gatherings with teams hastily assembled at the last moment, but these were some of my favorite memories from my college years.
My poem below is an attempt to recapture some of those moments. Unlike “Casey at the Bat”, there was much joy to be found in College Park during those amateur games.
This was written during my college years, and I don’t know if I could write this today, or even should write something like this today, as this poem is full of rough edges and not overflowing with beautiful language.
However, that is what I think I love about it. Much like our simple attempts at basketball all those years ago, the poem is pure and raw, even somewhat unfinished. Ah, the folly of youth!
So without further introduction, I hope you enjoy my poem “Hoops”.
Hoops
It wasn’t the easy, fluid style of play you see on TV, It was the jerky, nervous style of amateurs played on asphalt several feet away from where I was sitting. My shorts had ripped horrendously down the back during the last game, but that really didn’t matter in the big scheme of things, and besides, the jocky guy Chris would have never picked me to play after screwing up the last game so badly. An observer watched the game from the other side of the court, grinning to himself secretly. Perhaps he was happy to see the different bodies working so well together, Van, the Vietnamese guy; Joy, the Indian; Greg the African American and Danny the Anglo; or perhaps that was just what I wanted to see.
Chris the jock made a three-pointer, and murmurs of approval such as, “Good shot, man” or “Nice one, Chris” fill the air, replacing the sound of the tennis shoes against the pavement. I never questioned Chris’ basketball prowess. It was his attitude that puzzled me. I wanted to shake him and say, “Hey, Chris! Listen to what I’m saying, man! You’re just a pebble in the stream, man! Just a lowly grain of salt! This shot won’t change the world, dig?” But you can’t tell a guy like Chris something that big. He would just laugh it off and call you a stinkin’ liberal hippie, and go about his business of shooting politically correct jump shots, while I would go about my business of trying to change the things that couldn’t be changed.
As a writer and a poet, I do a lot of reading. Sometimes I read a poem that resonates with me so strongly, I read it several times. Sometimes I commit a poem or favorite passage to memory to make it easier to revisit. One of those poems is
“Recuerdo”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950)
It starts out
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
Composed of three stanzas, each containing three couplets, you can read the rest of the poem courtesy of the Poetry Foundation here.
Maybe it’s the rhythm, that mirrors for me the rocking of a ferry boat, the repetition of the line “We were very tired, we were very merry” that begins each stanza or the way she captures the exuberance of youth and the generous spirit of the poet and her companions, but I’ve always loved that particular poem.
Surprising, is how many people are unfamiliar with the name Edna St. Vincent Millay. The very first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry (1923), she was one of the most famous and successful American writers of the mid 20th century. Millay broke sales records and was a cultural celebrity who traveled across the United States giving captivating poetry readings to sold-out crowds.
A feminist, who openly loved both women and men, she was a prominent member of the literary community writing plays, publishing an opera libretto, as well as magazine articles under a pseudonym as well as publishing more than one dozen poetry collections. Her prize-winning poem “The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver” was dedicated to her mother. The poem tells a story of a penniless, self-sacrificing mother who spends Christmas Eve weaving for her son “wonderful things” on the strings of a harp, “the clothes of a king’s son.”
Raised in Maine by a single mother who elected to leave her husband during an era when divorce was not widely accepted, Millay was the eldest of three girls who largely had to take care of themselves while their mother would be absent from the house working as a homecare nurse. Surrounded by poetry, music and literature, Millay began writing her own poems at a young age.
WHERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
To learn more about her complicated life, I highly recommend Nancy Milford’s biography, Savage Beauty; The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Over 500 pages in length, it was comprehensively researched with the cooperation of Millay’s sister Norma, sole heir to the Edna St. Vincent Millay estate. and contains excerpts of Millay’s letters and poetry.
Here are two more poems to whet your appetite for Millay’s poetry.
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”
To learn more about her life and times, information is available from the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society. https://millay.org/
The author of this blogpost, Nadja Maril, has been published in dozens of publications including, Defunkt Magazine), Lunch Ticket, The Compressed Journal of Creative Arts, BarBar and Across the Margin. A former journalist and magazine editor, Nadja has an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. She recently published a collection of
OLD SCRATCH PRESS 