2026 Downtown Poetry Walk

Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library invites you to submit a poem for our inaugural

Downtown Poetry Walk!

We plan to exhibit submitted poems around the St. Joseph Downtown area

in partnership with downtown businesses during the month of April,

as well as our online poetry stroll accessible through QR codes on the posters.

The number of works selected for display in businesses will be dependent on the number of participating merchants. Each poet is able to submit two family-friendly poems to the project. Submitted and selected poems will be displayed on 11 x 17 inch posters each business will showcase one (or more) poem(s) from the entries we receive.

We ask that poems be relevant to our selected theme of "Transition." Family-friendly poems outside that theme will be considered as well.

• Transition, noun: a change from one state, place, subject or condition to another plural: transitions
• Transition, verb: to make a change from one state, place, subject or condition to another

Submission Guidelines:

• Poems must be original, unpublished, and non-AI generated;
• Must be submitted in MS word or text format (.doc, .docx, .txt);
• Be appropriate for all audiences, as these will be displayed in public - no curse words and no explicit sex or violence;
• Be wholly submitted and written by the submitter, and not published anywhere else. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please email publiclibrary@sjcity.com with the subject line “poetry withdrawal.”

We welcome poetry from people of all ages and poetry in other languages (please submit a translation alongside the entry). We will publish both on the poster, as space allows. If there isn’t enough space, we will publish the poetry in the original language it was written.

We reserve the right to choose not to publish every work submitted if more poems are submitted than we have space to display. Submissions will not be returned to the owner; please don’t give us your only copy of the poem. Authors retain all rights and copyright to their work.

Participants will need to submit a submission & release form along with their poem(s) to publiclibrary@sjcity.com by March 15th, 2025. Subject line - Poetry walk submission.

Download And Fill Out Our Submission PDF and email it to us for consideration.