Moving Words Student Competition 2025

Moving Words makes poetry a part of daily life for commuters riding Arlington Transit (ART) by replacing advertising placards inside public buses with poems by local poets. Held each spring for Arlington Public School students, the Moving Words Student Poetry Competition is a partnership between Arlington Cultural Affairs and the Arlington Public Schools Humanities Project, with support from Arlington Transit. Moving Words supports the goals of the Humanities Project’s Pick A Poet program, which invites professional poets into APS classrooms to share their experience and love for the craft with students. Visiting poets help students explore their own creativity, insight, and intellectual curiosity through the creative writing process, and provide students an opportunity to meet and talk with professional writers. The students are then encouraged to submit their work to the Moving Words student competition.

Call for Poems

The annual poetry contest STUDENT MOVING WORDS 2025 was open for submissions through June 1, 2025. The work of the ten winning poets will be printed on colorful placards and displayed prominently on area buses, enlivening the ride for thousands of commuters. This year’s Moving Words competition is juried by Jennifer Kronovet.

Each of the ten winning poems will be displayed inside Arlington Transit’s (ART) Buses between October 2025 and March 2026 where they will be seen by thousands of riders. Winning poems will be posted on ArlingtonArts.org and will be archived on the Arlington County CommuterPage.com website. View the Moving Words Student Competition Winning poems archive.

Prizes

Ten winning poets will have their poems displayed inside Arlington ART Buses for five months between October 2025 and March 2026.

Judge

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of two poetry collections: The Wug Test (Ecco Press), which was selected for the National Poetry Series, and Awayward (BOA Editions). Using the name Jennifer Stern, she co-translated Empty Chairs (Graywolf Press), the poetry of Chinese writer Liu Xia. She also co-translated The Acrobat, selected poems of experimental Yiddish writer Celia Dropkin. She edits Circumference Books, a new press for poetry in translation that she co-founded.

Eligibility

Student poets who attend Arlington Public Schools in Arlington, Virginia.

For more information, please contact Dan Brady, Literary Specialist, at dbrady@arlingtonva.us.