Adults and 50-Plus

Our 2025 Poetic Musings Poetry Contest invited everyone to write poetry that is either free verse, rhyme or a sonnet. Teen (ages 13-18 or 9th-12th graders) and adult winners (ages 19+) were selected from each poetry type.

We are pleased to announce our winners for 2025:

Teen Rhymes

• Silence Burns - Maheba Asmi

Teen Free Verse

• Dissonance - Siyoon Kim
• Freshman Year - Francesca Aiello
• The Heretic's Passage of Time - Bev Ta
• If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now - Elizabeth Bernat

Teen Sonnet

• The Wedding Gift - Lane Kocsis

Adult Rhymes

• Donor Embryo - Moira Grider
• Veni Vidi Vici - Jordan Stanley

Adult Free Verse

• Pele's Hair - Wes Carrington
• Unpacking - Susan Rexroad

Adult Sonnet

• Blossoms' Fall - Ruth Guthrie
• The War of April - Sky Sprayberry

Winners will receive a $50 gift card; a certificate signed by Eric Carzon, our Library Director and Lisa Bryant, our Fairfax Library Foundation Director; and an invitation to read their poem at our Poetic Musings Celebration on Thursday, June 26 at Burke Centre Library at 7 p.m. 

Cosponsored by Fairfax Library Foundation.