Winners of Westport’s 2025 Contest at the April Poetry Event at The Westport Library pictured with the WGC Club President
The Westport Garden Club partners with the Westport Arts Advisory Committee / Town Poet Laureate and The Westport Library to sponsor the Westport Youth Poetry Contest for students each year.
The theme for the 2026 competition is:
“PLANT AMERICA FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS
The contest is affiliated with the National Garden Club’s Youth Poetry Contest and is open to students in kindergarten through ninth grade including public and private schools, home-schooled students, Special Education, English as a Second Language, and General Education students.
This competition enables youth to embrace their creativity through the art of writing and express and explore their creative thoughts through different types of poetry.
Eligibility and Categories
Westport, CT youth in grades K-12 compete by grade-level in one of three categories: General Education, Special Education or English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).
Submissions and Deadlines
All poems are submitted to The Westport Garden Cub (affiliated with National Garden Clubs, Inc.)
Guidelines for Entries:
All entries must be typed and titled
Include the participant's name, address, age, grade, and school on the entry and the preferred email address for correspondence.
All entries become the property of National Garden Clubs, Inc.
Poems do not have to rhyme.
Poems may be traditional verse, acrostics, blank verse, cinquains, diamond poems, limericks, or Haiku.
The theme should not be used as the title of any poetry. (When judging, the title is worth 10 points.)
Poems should be submitted by email to: westportctgardenclub@gmail.com by JANUARY 5, 2026
Scale of Points
Title: 10%
Content: 40%
Creativity: 30%
Style: 20%
Total: 100%
Entries are due by January 5. The poems selected by a jury committee will then be submitted to the State Youth Chair. Poems selected as State winners will then be sent to the New England Garden Clubs Youth Chair for another round of judging. The region's final selections will then be submitted for National Garden Club Awards where winning entries will be compiled into an e-book published online. Westport’s poets will be invited to read from their work at a Westport Library event, open to the public to celebrate National Poetry Month and Earth Day in April 2026.