Applying for a scholarship on PowerPoetry.org? Here are our answers to your questions:
- How old do I have to be to enter? You must be between 13 and 25 years old at the time of submission.
- Do I have to be a U.S. citizen? No, but you have to have attended or be attending high school in the U.S. If you’re already in college, you must be enrolled in a U.S. college.
- If I’m not in college yet, will you hold the scholarship until I go to college? Yup! But your scholarship will not be awarded until you enroll in college.
- I'm a graduate student (or will be a graduate student soon). Can I still apply? Yes! Gradaute students are welcome to apply, as long as they are under age 25 at the time of submission.
- How do I submit my poem--and how do I know that my poem is entered in the contest? Register as a user on our site. Then go back to the scholarship slam and click ‘add a poem.’ Write your poem and submit. To confirm that your poem is entered, go to My Account (in the top right corner of the website), scroll down to My Stuff, and see if your poem is tagged with appropriate scholarship slam. You can see this by clicking "edit" on your poem and making sure it is tagged to the correct slam.
- Can I use profanities? There are no language restrictions on Power Poetry (including profanities) for our scholarship slams, or otherwise.
- Can I submit a poem in a foreign language? Yes, as long as you include an English (translated) version.
- How many poems can I submit to scholarship slams? ONE. Each user may only submit one poem for each scholarship slam. And if our genius tech gurus find out that you submitted more, you'll be disqualified from the contest. (But you can submit as many poems as you'd like on our website!)
- Can I submit a poem I've already written on Power Poetry or a poem that's been published elsewhere? You are welcome to use a poem you have already written (on Power Poetry and elsewhere), however, we prefer poets to illustrate change and growth by submitting new or updated works.
- Is there a minimum (or maximum) number of words I need in my poem to apply for a scholarship? Nope! Just make sure your poem is well developed, and that you're content with it.
- My poem's line breaks aren't showing up. How do I separate the lines? You need to use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. If you're still having trouble, try pasting your poem into a program that removes MSWord formatting (like TextWrangler or Notepad).
- How will you pick the winner? This blog post tells you more about how judge our scholarships. Click here to see our past winners.
- What happens if I win, but I don't know where I'm going to college yet? We will hold the money until you enroll in college--and will send it once we have proof of enrollment.
- When and how will you announce the winner? Three to five months after the scholarship has ended--we typically have more than 5,000 entries per Scholarship Slam! When we've made our decision, we'll contact the winner, highlight the winning entry on our site, make an announcement on our Facebook and Twitter, and send out an announcement email.
- Who owns the poems I post on PowerPoetry.org? You do! Find out more about ownership in our privacy section.
- Can I submit my poem to PowerPoetry.org and another website? Absolutely! But we will check for plagiarism, so be sure to let us know in the comments section. If anything looks weird, we'll reach out to you for more information.
- Does my poem need to include an image or video? Nope, not unless we specifically say so in the scholarship slam description. However, we do encourage you to combine multimedia with your poetry. Check out this guide for some awesome ideas. Poems aren't just meant to be read, you know!
Have a general question about the website? Be sure to read our general FAQ. If you don't see your answer there, email help@powerpoetry.org. Please include your username in the email--just in case we need to check out something on our end. And bonus points for emails that follow these guidelines.