Columbia Granger's World of Poetry®
2025 Student Poetry Contest Winners
2025 Student Poetry Contest Winners
In celebration of National Poetry Month, Columbia University Press is pleased to announce the three winners and two honorable mentions in the ninth annual Columbia Granger's World of Poetry® Student Poetry Contest.
WINNING POEMS
“past 4 a.m. near the river station”
inspired by "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" by William Wordsworth
the city sighs in lowercase.
windows blink open like tired eyes
& the train tracks tremble with no train.
no one says anything
because the morning is still deciding
whether to be beautiful or ordinary.
the traffic lights change for no one,
ghosts of commuters long gone.
streetlamps paint halos on puddles.
there’s something holy about the hush.
(it’s not silence, exactly—
just absence, worn gently, like an old coat in late November.)
somewhere, behind glass and concrete,
a saxophone breathes once.
& for a moment
the whole city listens.
we missed the last train so we sit
on the curb near 12th & Avenue A,
feet bruised from dancing
& lungs full of borrowed night.
there’s no one out but pigeons
& a man carving words into wet cement with a key.
it feels illegal to speak.
so we just stare
at windows still lit.
i say, “look,” and point to the sky
(pointing like a kid
who’s never seen sky before).
you say, “i know,”
like you already knew.
----------------
“Portrait of a Summer Hospital in Gray”
by Lindsay Li of The Harker School, San Jose, California
inspired by "Peonies" by Mark Wunderlich
In late summer, Beijing blurs outside
our car window. As we speed past the flurry of
bikers racing across Chang’an Avenue’s ten lanes,
Beijing prospers with gleaming glass towers, snack
vendors calling out their wares on the street,
hawthorn berries in full ripeness bunching like
rubies on a headpiece. Yet tired green foliage outside
the old hospital is still the only source of color punctuating
the suddenly gray landscape. Inside, at the end
of the hallway, third floor, there’s a room I once knew.
Whether or not the smog of my memory clouded the view
out the single window, I couldn’t say. My mother and
younger brother didn’t share my view, but I always thought
the place felt too sterile, maybe because my grandfather had been
dying on the hospital bed. At eleven I thought it was
just like the canopy bed I spent years dreaming which never
came to fruition, without flowery curtains and thick mattresses—
without any similarity at all. Maybe the yellow couch didn’t
bounce so he wouldn’t hear the squeaking and remember
he is a man who could no longer move.
His last words were not to me but
about me. Take care of your sister, he said
to a four-year-old boy whose sister barely paid
her grandfather attention while he was still around.
The hospital goes by, ricocheting me back
to the car. Beside me, a nine-year-old brother
has already forgotten those last words. Somewhere
beneath my feet, familiar ashes burrow in the earth.
our car window. As we speed past the flurry of
bikers racing across Chang’an Avenue’s ten lanes,
Beijing prospers with gleaming glass towers, snack
vendors calling out their wares on the street,
hawthorn berries in full ripeness bunching like
rubies on a headpiece. Yet tired green foliage outside
the old hospital is still the only source of color punctuating
the suddenly gray landscape. Inside, at the end
of the hallway, third floor, there’s a room I once knew.
Whether or not the smog of my memory clouded the view
out the single window, I couldn’t say. My mother and
younger brother didn’t share my view, but I always thought
the place felt too sterile, maybe because my grandfather had been
dying on the hospital bed. At eleven I thought it was
just like the canopy bed I spent years dreaming which never
came to fruition, without flowery curtains and thick mattresses—
without any similarity at all. Maybe the yellow couch didn’t
bounce so he wouldn’t hear the squeaking and remember
he is a man who could no longer move.
His last words were not to me but
about me. Take care of your sister, he said
to a four-year-old boy whose sister barely paid
her grandfather attention while he was still around.
The hospital goes by, ricocheting me back
to the car. Beside me, a nine-year-old brother
has already forgotten those last words. Somewhere
beneath my feet, familiar ashes burrow in the earth.
----------------
“A Place in the New World”
by Iris Lee of Concordia Shanghai School, Shanghai, China
inspired by "Say Grace" by Emily Jungmin Yoon
i keep my ancestry on an island. i sail away
with white men as my tongue spins
the steer. i help nai nai buckle her seatbelt
as my laughter lifts the ark’s sails, my hybrid tooth
forces her into silence deeper than a nail.
i ask who held the hammer splitting our bloodline
like a vein? whose excitement pulsed
with the sound of a pig being domesticated
in the dirt? who martyred my skin, stretched it
around the colonizer’s bony stake,
to soften me into a fat lantern? who stroked
the flame inside with infidelity?
once i’ve become a child crossing fields
of cracked eggshells again. the soft petal of my feet
bleeding sewed lines of red.
the car engine roars out of a kicking womb
of rice. our flesh sticking together
at every roundabout, then splitting like fortune
cookies to reveal blonde incense paper
& a sea of graves cleaving
the mountains instead of good fortune.
a man i can’t touch throws me like a plastic ingot
into the fire until i taste like iron. the gold
of a brass machine. no ancestral angel collects me
from the sky. i am alone, limping out
of the ark into this new world, a white fishbone
twisted in my throat like a lever.
with white men as my tongue spins
the steer. i help nai nai buckle her seatbelt
as my laughter lifts the ark’s sails, my hybrid tooth
forces her into silence deeper than a nail.
i ask who held the hammer splitting our bloodline
like a vein? whose excitement pulsed
with the sound of a pig being domesticated
in the dirt? who martyred my skin, stretched it
around the colonizer’s bony stake,
to soften me into a fat lantern? who stroked
the flame inside with infidelity?
once i’ve become a child crossing fields
of cracked eggshells again. the soft petal of my feet
bleeding sewed lines of red.
the car engine roars out of a kicking womb
of rice. our flesh sticking together
at every roundabout, then splitting like fortune
cookies to reveal blonde incense paper
& a sea of graves cleaving
the mountains instead of good fortune.
a man i can’t touch throws me like a plastic ingot
into the fire until i taste like iron. the gold
of a brass machine. no ancestral angel collects me
from the sky. i am alone, limping out
of the ark into this new world, a white fishbone
twisted in my throat like a lever.
----------------
HONORABLE MENTION
“Los Angeles, 2005”
by Ashley Mo of The Harker School, San Jose, California
inspired by "Descano, California" by Chris Yost
We walked through what was left —
milk cartons bobbing
in the street’s rivered throat, a bicycle
half-sunken in the mud, wheels
still & rusting, spokes like the silent hands
of a broken watch. The wind
howled for mercy, for the fury
that ripped through the wounds
of shattered windows. In the overflow
of a gutter, a doll’s face grays
through the storm, eyes beady, blue
& wide, silent as the dress clung
like seaweed to her frame — fluttering
like a flag of surrender. Across the street
mourners light candles — flames
trembling like ghosts against walls
that once held us. We stood, mud
hiding our ankles from sight, weeping
thick tears into the air, our voices receding
with the water: not knowing
if anyone could hear us praying
for strength to stitch us whole,
to sew us back together.
by Ashley Mo of The Harker School, San Jose, California
inspired by "Descano, California" by Chris Yost
We walked through what was left —
milk cartons bobbing
in the street’s rivered throat, a bicycle
half-sunken in the mud, wheels
still & rusting, spokes like the silent hands
of a broken watch. The wind
howled for mercy, for the fury
that ripped through the wounds
of shattered windows. In the overflow
of a gutter, a doll’s face grays
through the storm, eyes beady, blue
& wide, silent as the dress clung
like seaweed to her frame — fluttering
like a flag of surrender. Across the street
mourners light candles — flames
trembling like ghosts against walls
that once held us. We stood, mud
hiding our ankles from sight, weeping
thick tears into the air, our voices receding
with the water: not knowing
if anyone could hear us praying
for strength to stitch us whole,
to sew us back together.
----------------
"Maotai Eulogies"
by Angel Xin of The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
inspired by "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks
Pa inherits his Pa’s wrinkled kidneys & paves Neverland. We–
Ma & I– subsist on a drunken dream before his addiction turns real
at midnight. When Pa leads parades in tribute to Dionysus, rhapsodic & cool,
& purges Metis in a home to a family of three, we
sob out our throbbing hearts until fear is right and left.
Our claws cling to familiar skin. We are fish from the same school
washed up on the gulf as our men drown in a bloodline seeping in Vodka. We
set tables, lay out chopsticks & porcelain plates, lurk
like sea nymphs beneath sober ripples. When God is late
Pa downs another shot of Tequila & we
blame his roots for his sins. Satans from every version of Genesis strike
to dissect our American Gothic: Zeus’ lightning bolt hits straight
from Olympus & blames his faults on Chronus– for cursing every son. We
kneel before Jupiter’s elegy while Pa rises from his bottle to sing
Hallelujah & praise the Lord for honoring men with sin,
drilling gluttony into boys scrapped from their mothers’ flesh rooms. We
paint maguey thorns with blood. Rid us of our sex! We bargain with Pagan gods in paper-thin
faith. The Buddha will never rid Eve of her suffering. We sip gin
& tonic for supper & our tears hemorrhage backstage. Tonight we
will forget, let Maotai scoop & slide an undying solo in our residential jazz.
Summer’s heat melts valor in june,
scorches faith in july, before angels resume their service in august. But we
slay time, snap the hour hand before the sun can sink & we pretend that men die
for honor. Like father like son, Pa will flee Neverland for heaven & soon.
----------------
by Angel Xin of The Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
inspired by "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks
Pa inherits his Pa’s wrinkled kidneys & paves Neverland. We–
Ma & I– subsist on a drunken dream before his addiction turns real
at midnight. When Pa leads parades in tribute to Dionysus, rhapsodic & cool,
& purges Metis in a home to a family of three, we
sob out our throbbing hearts until fear is right and left.
Our claws cling to familiar skin. We are fish from the same school
washed up on the gulf as our men drown in a bloodline seeping in Vodka. We
set tables, lay out chopsticks & porcelain plates, lurk
like sea nymphs beneath sober ripples. When God is late
Pa downs another shot of Tequila & we
blame his roots for his sins. Satans from every version of Genesis strike
to dissect our American Gothic: Zeus’ lightning bolt hits straight
from Olympus & blames his faults on Chronus– for cursing every son. We
kneel before Jupiter’s elegy while Pa rises from his bottle to sing
Hallelujah & praise the Lord for honoring men with sin,
drilling gluttony into boys scrapped from their mothers’ flesh rooms. We
paint maguey thorns with blood. Rid us of our sex! We bargain with Pagan gods in paper-thin
faith. The Buddha will never rid Eve of her suffering. We sip gin
& tonic for supper & our tears hemorrhage backstage. Tonight we
will forget, let Maotai scoop & slide an undying solo in our residential jazz.
Summer’s heat melts valor in june,
scorches faith in july, before angels resume their service in august. But we
slay time, snap the hour hand before the sun can sink & we pretend that men die
for honor. Like father like son, Pa will flee Neverland for heaven & soon.
----------------
See the winning poems from 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024
See contest rules here
