Photograph by Visual Art Agency / iStock/ Getty Images Plus
Launched in 2014 by former Georgia poet laureate Judson Mitcham, in collaboration with the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Georgia Poet Laureate’s Prize is an annual program designed to encourage works by teen writers. It is open to all students in grades 9 through 12. Read more about its inception here and meet the 2025 winners and finalists below, selected by state poet laureate Chelsea Rathburn.
Winner
“Fatherless Echoes”
By Jada Michelle Ellis
In the quiet, you are a shadow,
A name whispered like an echo in empty rooms.
I search for you in faces of strangers,
Tracing lines that never matched my own.
A girl should have a father’s hand to hold,
A lighthouse in the fog of becoming.
But you were always a silhouette,
Fading before I could define you.
I wonder if you think of me,
In those rare moments when life stands still,
When silence creeps in between the noise,
Do you hear my voice in the distance?
You left me with questions,
A half-written story with missing pages.
Each year I fill the blanks with what might have been—
Would you have taught me how to love,
Or how to forgive?
Sometimes I catch glimpses of your absence
In the way I build walls too high to climb,
And though I wish you’d stayed,
The emptiness taught me strength,
A lesson I learned alone.
Still, I dream of your return,
Not to fill the void you left behind
But to understand why you left it at all.
And so, I write this for you,
A letter in a bottle set adrift on seas we’ll never sail,
Hoping, someday, you’ll read the words
And hear the daughter you forgot to know.
Jada Michelle Ellis is a distinguished junior at Woodland High School in Stockbridge, renowned for her academic excellence, studious behavior, and leadership. She exemplifies dedication and intellectual curiosity as an honor student and an active member of several academic organizations. As a talented tenor saxophonist, Jada is a leader in her school band, showcasing her commitment to the arts and her peers. Her passion for creativity extends to visual arts and graphic design, where she continually explores new mediums and techniques. An avid reader, Jada draws inspiration from a diverse range of literature, fueling her aspirations for higher education and a future career that bridges the arts and academia. Her multifaceted talents and unwavering determination make her a rising star in scholastic and creative arenas.
Finalists (alphabetical by author’s last name)
“Dino Before Impact”
A retelling of the dinosaur extinction
By Jaiden Geolingo
Someday, the scribes will find us quarry-deep.
Mother holds our hands to ward off the paleontologists, & I repent
before the metal debones us. The soil begs to straitjacket
our bodies, but we dance, algae buried in our fingernails.
Outside, we witness myths in carmine-red: wreckage & extinction in marshlands—
we look up & the sky gapes open, cracks into star shows as if there are no
bloodpools.
I picture the Meteor to fissure into a body
holy & bright, the muck dispelled from the bark.
We still waltz like madmen while the insects spit
out psalms: one for eulogies & the other for our mouths.
O, sister.
Let me tell you about our corpses:
someday, our mothers would lull us to sleep with lullabies
& the Meteor would coruscate through the conifers.
Our talons swell through the soil, saying so holy & we worship a broken cathedral.
Either way, the iron-ball strobes along the sky, relentless
& wanting new land. This heat: flameless & alive & a visitor.
Soon, we will harvest the valleys with bones;
we will cradle the topsoil made of bread.
Forgive this barren field
& the fire shaped like
salvation.
In our hands there are scales that look like forests.
In our hands there is prayer.
I will miss this. I will inhale the smoke & wait.
This poem contains special formatting. View the original format here.
Jaiden Geolingo is a sophomore at Howard High School in Macon and the author of How to Migrate Ghosts (Kith Books, forthcoming). A 2025 National YoungArts Winner in Poetry, he has also been recognized by Bennington College, The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, 13WMAZ, and other organizations. Jaiden’s work appears or is forthcoming in Diode Poetry Journal, The Shore, Dishsoap Quarterly, The Poetry Society, and several other publications. He will attend the Governor’s Honors Program this summer for Communicative Arts, but when he’s not writing, he is eating food or singing karaoke. Lastly, he’d like to thank his mentors, friends, and family for their support; he wouldn’t have started writing without them.
“Savannah, Georgia (+Other Bolted Places)”
By Max Lee
Between overheating parents, dueling distance apart,
the city sits cross-legged on the trembling ground,
untying Dad’s bootlaces and undoing Mom’s heel straps.
Spit droplets rain on the floorboard and seep into the fault lines.
Summertime fallout.
Moonlight waves a hand through the shutters,
while I witness the eventual death of a union.
Carpets stained with regret from quarrels,
history in the fibers.
Before marriages went south, we took vacations down south.
With the AC blasting, we cruised alongside Amtrak rails
before reaching the city of canopies and Confederate monuments
with plaques I couldn’t read back then.
We grinned at bronze soldiers as Dad positioned the camera.
These must be our heroes, my naivety surmised.
Horses in streets. Reenactors in parks. Howitzers in yards.
Pockets stuck in pasts, Dad still asking passersby to capture family photos.
I remember crossing bridges on the Jefferson Davis Highway,
binoculars searching for alligators in clay-infested rivers,
unaware of the drowned ghosts in Ebenezer Creek.
The Union Army once waded here,
leaving behind matchsticks and scrapwood.
Marigold blazes blossoming out of collapsing cottage shells
as families evacuated beneath smoke shrouds.
Firestorming through Atlanta. But some cities were too beautiful to burn.
There are roads I can’t take, sites I can’t visit anymore.
Cities no longer places, but emotions.
Capsulized feelings of what once was.
Some nights, I imagine stars as cities flickering in the distance.
Darkness and brightness, past and future.
Like lightbulbs blinking in rooms we were all once in.
Max Lee is a senior at the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology. His poetry has been recognized by the Pulitzer Center and Live Poets of New Jersey and has also received Regional Keys and a National Silver Medal in Writing Portfolio from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. He will be attending the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio this summer. Besides poetry, Max combines his interest in computer science and writing in research into computational linguistics, presenting his research at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the Georgia Science and Engineering Fair. In his free time, Max enjoys improvising piano covers, jamming to music (the entire discographies of Bastille, Lord Huron, and Koethe), collecting vinyl records, and catching Broadway musicals. He expresses his greatest gratitude to his teachers and family for their support.
“love poem in haiku form”
By Rachel Li
mother picks at ripe
tomatoes, burnished by sun
and sweat. she discards
the greens and yellows,
instead opting to savor
the tender scarlet.
later, she will coat
them in oil and spices
and heat, but for now
she places the reds
in between her molars and
presses hard, acid
filling her mouth in
a glorious symphony.
warm and tart, dirt still
embedded in stems:
unwashed and free, just like her
mother before her,
the mother before
her mother’s mother, and soon
her too. she slips a
soft hand against her
belly and colors her tongue
red once more, hoping
that her daughter, too,
will love the taste of all things
raw and grown from vines.
Rachel Li is a junior at North Oconee High School. A Scholastic Art and Writing medal recipient and alumnus of Juniper Young Writers Institute, she uses writing to explore topics around her. Beyond writing, she enjoys many hobbies, such as art, games, and hanging out with friends, especially if it involves sampling new foods and restaurants. She looks forward to sharing more of her work with the world!
“Firelight Lullaby”
By Liora Yustein
In Maine, I feel stars
deep between my toes– hiding
like comets under the grass–
and the blades that breathe softly under the
starch sand. The lobsters crawl
their way past the jewels from the leftover
parties, and rub toes between
red gardening gloves.
I fear the wind turned north. The
ocean pulsing with the moon, and the
mothers coddling their babies,
then fork-feeding the toddlers–
they look like fish fresh out of eggs or
nurse sharks tainting the shore.
I know the lights couldn’t reach there
where the snow melts into sand
and the shadows cater to their
surfaces, bent edges near the beach, and the
crabs that walk over toes
pinch their fingers, like mothers right
near a baby’s cheek
rocking in that same sandy chair.
In the ocean’s temper,
and swindling bottles
I bring my stomach up to
redline the sweat stains,
time moves tightly against freckled skin, before
deep under the grass turns singed.
Until the ocean finally settles.
Liora Yustein is a junior at Decatur High School. She has participated in her school’s creative writing program for three years and has served as the editor-in-chief of her school’s literary magazine. She also performs and choreographs with her local dance company. When she’s not writing or tutoring students in math, you can always find her working in her school’s garden or removing invasive ivy from nearby parks. She would like to thank her English and creative writing teacher, Ms. Frances Wilson, for being such an amazing mentor. She is incredibly honored to receive this award and excited to continue writing.
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