Poetry Contest
The Enoch Pratt Free Library Poetry Contest is an annual event open to Maryland poets age 18 and older.
2025 Poetry Contest Co-Winners
Congratulations to the finalists in the 2025 Enoch Pratt Free Library Poetry Contest!
The co-winners are Greg Sevik, for "The Day After I Started This Poem, David Lynch Died,” and Marna Williams, for "Why I Like Richard Diebenkorn: Ocean Park #94 (1976).”
The runners-up are Adriana Beltrano, for "Mutant Sonnet with Tail,” and Jeremy Cox, for "Out and Back On the Junction and Breakwater Trail.”
The contest was judged anonymously by Little Patuxent Review.
Read the winning poems and previous winners in the Enoch Pratt Free Library Poetry Contest Winners PDF.
Read the Winning Poems
Greg Sevik is a poet, translator, and English professor at the Community College of Baltimore County. His poems and translations have been published in Avalon Literary Review, Ekphrastic Review, Inventory, Iron Horse, Vagabond City, and elsewhere. He earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature from Binghamton University (SUNY) and served as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in Vreden, Germany. He lives in Baltimore, where he is working on his first book.
Marna Williams lives in North Potomac, Maryland, and is an immunobiologist with 20 years’ experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, designing and developing novel immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune disease. While she chose science for a profession, storytelling and poetry are in her blood, for she grew up in the Deep South where everything of significance has a story attached to it. She enjoys reading and writing poetry as a counterbalance to complement medical science. Poetry offers a sanctuary, a place to rest while the world keeps spinning.
The poems by all four finalists will be published in Little Patuxent Review’s summer 2025 issue and celebrated at a public Library event on Saturday, July 12, at 3 pm. The winning poems may also be turned into collectible broadsides. For more information, please email poetry@prattlibrary.org.
There were 231 poems submitted to the 2025 Poetry Contest, representing 58 cities and towns and 18 counties in Maryland, plus Baltimore City.
Thank you to everyone who entered the 2025 Poetry Contest! We truly appreciated every entry.
Check out our upcoming poetry events for adults:
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The African American Department sponsors a night of poetry and spoken word. Poets come and be heard at a poetry open mic…July 24, 5:45 PM -
Join us online for a discussion of the poetry of Jane Kenyon. We hope to discuss some of the following poems: …August 9, 11 AM -
Join us for readings and discussion that showcase the Washington Writers' Publishing House's new anthology, AMERICA&rsquo…September 27, 3 PM -
Join us for a reading and conversation with poet Dora Malech and memoirist Jeannie Vanasco. About Trying x Trying…October 11, 3 PM
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