Poetry Contest Guidelines:
You must be a student enrolled in a school in the United States to participate.
Poetry must be on the topic of nuclear weapons waste. More information here and here.
Poetry may be any form or language, as long as an English translation is provided.
Submit your poem anytime between Jan 13 - March 31, 2026 via this form. Name, age, email, phone, school, and mailing address required with submission. Permission form is required for students under 18 years old. Your identifying information will not be shared with anyone outside of Hanford Challenge.
One submission per student.
Poems may be selected for posting on social media and the Hanford Challenge webpage throughout the contest.
Cash prizes for at least one and up to 5 winners. Winners announced in April 2026.
Contest will follow the CLMP code of ethics.
Poems will be judged “blind.” Our judge will only be reviewing the submitted poem and will not have access to identifying information about the contestant.
By submitting a poem to our contest, you accept that your poem may appear online and in print with your name and school. We reserve the right to publish or not publish a poem for any reason.
We are thrilled to announce that Derek Sheffield is our contest judge!
Derek Sheffield is the eighth poet laureate of Washington State (2025-2027). He is the author of Not for Luck, selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Through the Second Skin, runner-up for the Emily Dickinson First Book Award and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. He is the co-editor, with Simmons Buntin and Elizabeth Dodd, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy and, with Elizabeth Bradfield and CMarie Fuhrman, Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry. His awards include the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, the Foreword Reviews Indies Book of the Year in Nature Writing, and the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Li-Young Lee. Derek lives on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Central Washington and is the poetry editor of Terrain.org.
Funded in part by a Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology.