Rules and Guidelines

2026 ROW Rules and Guidelines

Please read the detailed instructions for the 2026 River of Words International Art and Poetry Contest. 

Contest Rules:

1. All submissions are due by January 31, 2026 at 11:59pm PST, after which the submission portal will close and no late submissions will be accepted for any reason. 

2. If you are a resident in Georgia or Arizona, U.S.A, please submit your pieces through the Georgia or Arizona River of Words statewide contest. Your submission will automatically be entered into the International River of Words Contest. See the Georgia ROW Website or the Arizona ROW Website for more information on the Statewide contests. 

3. The contest is open to Pre-K–12th grade students, ages 5–19. Students must be enrolled in school to be eligible. All entries must be submitted by a parent, guardian, educator, or facilitator unless the student is 18 years old or older.

4. Participants may submit up to 5 entries for poetry and 5 entries for art (total of up to 10 entries). If more than 5 entries are submitted, we will only accept the first 5 as is. For each entry, please fill out a separate Jotform. If multiple entries are submitted in the same form, only the first submission will be eligible for judging. 

5. All poems and artwork must be original work. AI-generated poems and artwork will not be eligible for judging.  

6. Please remove all personal information from the poetry document and its file name. This includes name, age, school, and address.

7. Poems should not exceed 32 lines in length (written) or 3 minutes (signed). For ASL poetry, please include a brief written summary of the poem’s content.

8. Collaborative poems and artwork are accepted, but only one student (chosen as the group representative) will be eligible for any prizes awarded.

9. At this time, we are able to accept poems only in English and Spanish.

10. Art must be mailed to the River of Words physical address in order to be considered for the competition regardless of medium. Art will not be returned to the artist. If the art is a digital piece, please have it printed. Mailed-in art submissions need to include a printed Jotform confirmation when sent alongside the art piece(s). See address below. 

          Attn: River of Words
          Filippi Academic Hall (FAH 200), 2nd Floor
          1928 St. Mary's Rd., PMB #4350
          Moraga, CA 94575-4350
          United States of America

11. All artwork must be original work. Acceptable media are paint, pencil, markers, ink, crayon, chalk or pastel (fixed), photography, cloth, collage, and computer art.

12. Revisions will not be accepted. Please make sure your work is completed before submitting to the portal.

13. By submitting any work of any kind to River of Words, you are granting, on behalf of yourself and the student, to River of Words all rights in the work, including but not limited to the right to publish, reproduce, perform, distribute and to include the work in the River of Words annual anthology, on River of Words websites, or in any other publications deemed appropriate by River of Words. Works submitted to River of Words cannot be submitted for other publications or competitions.

14. Teacher and group submissions will only be accepted through the Jotform portal. We no longer accept submissions via Google or Dropbox. There is a new parent/guardian permission form. Old parental permission forms will not be accepted. Parental permission forms only need to be submitted when teachers are submitting on behalf of their students. 

          (English) 2026 ROW Parent/Guardian Permission Form

          (Español) 2026 ROW Parent/Guardian Permission Form

15. The email address provided on the Jotform submission will be automatically added to the River of Words mailing list, which is used to share important contest updates. You may unsubscribe at any time.  

16. Questions and concerns can be emailed to rowinfo@stmarys-ca.edu.

Contest Guidelines:

Competition Prompt

River of Words is looking for artwork and poetry that…

• Thoughtfully considers ideas, images and language. Be specific!
• Shows the reader something. Paint a picture (with paint or with words)!
• Creates an experience for the reader/viewer: use images that take us on a journey or make us feel something.
• Has fun: with form, images, textures. Surprise yourself by trying something new!
• Features a specific aspect, formation, ecosystem, or organism of nature that resonates with you.
• Exhibits scientific knowledge of a particular subject learned in the classroom.
• Invites us into your backyard: go outside, what do you see? What do you hear?
• What do you smell? What do you feel?
• Shows what no one else sees: a poem or artwork that reveals your own unique observations or personal experiences.
• Speaks to an awareness of a global community or collective consciousness: a poem or artwork can reflect the experiences of a culture or natural world surrounding you.

Students may want to ask themselves, what do the ideas above mean to me? The answers will be different for everyone, though we hope to give you some idea of what we are looking for. We want students to follow their creativity to its fullest extent by exploring and trying things they have not done before while they create poetry and art of environment and place.

Poetry Guidelines:

All poems must be original work and will be judged based on the following components: 

1. Consistency: What is the poem’s form or style and does it remain consistent throughout?

2. Qualities: Does the poem rhyme, does it have a rhythm to it? If it does not rhyme, does it have a rhythm that ties it together? If it does rhyme is there a pattern that is followed?

3. Craft: Does the poem use poetic devices? 

4. Voice: Does the poem retain comprehension or a sense of coherence? Is the purpose realized?

5. Content: Does the meaning of the poem go along with the prompt provided by the River of Words?

Art Guidelines:

All artwork must be original work and will be judged based on the following components: 

1. Knowledge of medium: Does the piece utilize one or multiple art mediums (pencil, paint, photography, etc.)? The student does not need to display mastery of the medium, but the piece should represent a level of understanding of the medium they have chosen.

2. Content: Does the piece of artwork depict something to do with the environment, local watersheds, cultural impact on the environment, etc.?

3. Creativity and Originality: Is the piece unique to the artist? Is it clear that the artist took time and effort to create the piece? Does the piece represent skill appropriate for the artists grade level?

4. Craft: Does the work introduce a thought, concept, idea and/or make you think on a higher level? Are there elements to the piece that are purposeful and add to the piece?

5. Composition and presentation: Does the piece have or reflect any of the following: repeating shapes, patterns, symmetry, colors that are complementary, use of texture to add to the story, composition to show fields of depth and keep the eye focused, movements or flow of scenery, correct/appealing or purposeful incorrect proportions.