Spirit First Poetry Contest 2015

Our 6^th annual Spirit First poetry contest received an amazing 2,097 poems—a record-breaking year for us! Poems came in from 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 44 foreign countries (the missing U.S. state was Hawaii). 

Poems from outside the U.S. arrived from Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, Cook Islands, Cuba, Denmark, Egypt, England, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, Lagos, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Republic of Mauritius, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tunisia, UAE/Abudhabi, UAE/Dubai, and Ukraine. The foreign nation with the most entries was India, with nearly 100 poems entered. The American state with the most entries was California with 175 poems, followed by New York and then New Jersey. We received 300 poems without information on physical location (city/state/country).

Thank you to all who participated—we appreciate every poet, every poem. Your writing on the themes of meditation and mindfulness is important to the world, and what a great work it was to select winners from so many beautiful words. Very special thanks to our team of judges and all your efforts to select the winners.