The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers partner to present the National Student Poets Program, the nation’s highest honor for young poets (grades 10–11) creating original work. This year, the five students selected collaborated on a poem that underscores the importance of libraries. Read the poem exclusively published in Literary Hub here.

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by Miles Hardingwood, Jacqueline Flores, Kallan McKinney, Gabriella Miranda, and Shangri-La Hou

Its shelves ivory             rhyme-dusted,
lost entryways make meaningless
chapters. It was these once-wandered pages

that first lifted concrete into iamb, cliched dew
drops until they splintered, cast sludged waters
into wading pools then asked what could

be reflected. This book
where the boy first breathed a poet
is now decrepit, answered yesterday.

These covers,
Whose canvas imprinted on grey fingertips to chest.
Knowledge—whose message privies from
These pages,
Which innocent ignorance never traced.
Selfdom encountered from the fragrance of
These breakthroughs,
Where sight is restored to the acquiescent mind of a forced veil.

it is a kind of survival—how stories seed themselves
into children, & children grow themselves
into adults

We keep a thumbprint of these relics,
The tapestries, the eyelet threading
We call our anniversaries

That ferry through the smile lines
Of worn mountain faces,
Their protruding ridges for noses

Catching the dustings of one overcast story.
We inhale the alpine scent
Of book spines and fables turned anew,

Exhaling the perfume of narrative.
We record and record again
This blood-beat pulse of learning.

All of the children share
one silence—one recognition
of the sacred place where words fly
their maybes like hummingbird wings
from every page.

Right here, she points, offering wildness
without explanation. There’s a dragon, life-breathing,
watching me grow.