Our 5^th annual Spirit First poetry contest received an amazing 1,752 poems, a record-breaking year for us! Poems came in from 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 45 foreign countries (the only missing U.S. states were Iowa and North Dakota).

Poems from outside the U.S. arrived from Algeria, Australia, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Republic of Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kosovo, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Seychelles, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Serbia, China, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, and Ukraine. (Some poems arrived with nationality/address unknown.)

Thank you to all who participated--we appreciate every poet, every poem. Your writing is important to the world--please keep doing what you are doing.

Very special thanks to our team of judges and all your efforts to select the winners. What a great work it was to choose from so many beautiful works!