For more than 10 years, Baltimore’s Youth Poet Laureate Competition has empowered young people to speak their truth

On a rainy Saturday afternoon at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse in late April, bustling with people eating, working, and socializing, Marcellus Vinson is talking about prescription drugs and prisons to a rapt audience. As Vinson closes the poem to a raucous applause, a woman from the audience, moved to tears, runs to embrace him. She shakes his hand, hugs him again tightly, before rushing out the door. His peers dap him up and cheer him on. Just two days earlier, Vinson was named the 2026 Baltimore youth poet laureate, though the news wouldn’t be publicly shared for more than a month. In this first performance since he learned the news, he glows with that private knowledge. Vinson won the award in his first year of entering the competition, hosted by DewMore Baltimore and the city, and five years into his poetry writing career. Last spring, he graduated from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School and also received his associate’s degree in arts and sciences from Baltimore City Community College, a testament to the rigor he brings to his writing. “You want to keep people engaged with what you’re saying. You get to introduce these different devices in your writing to keep people engaged, but you’re also telling a message at the same time,” Vinson said. Since the first competition in 2015, The Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate program has been a platform to uplift youth voices from the city through poetry, connecting them to city officials and other community leaders as a voice of the city. “We already had programming where young people was going out into the community and performing, both locally and nationally,” said Kenneth Morrison, founder of DewMore Baltimore. Founded in 2012, DewMore Baltimore is an organization dedicated to advancing social justice and youth empowerment through poetry. “The real passion and genius of the program was having it at City Hall and inviting community leaders and elected officials. Folks who are creating change and leading change in the city need to hear from these young people.” Alongside the recognition and a cash prize, the youth poet laureate gets a one-year term as an official voice at conferences and community events, publishes a book, and goes on a book tour at the various Enoch Pratt Free Library branches across the city. Runners-up get the opportunity to work alongside the youth poet laureate as ambassadors, accompanying them to different readings and speaking engagements. It’s not unusual for the runner-up ambassadors to toss their hat into the ring again for a chance at the title. Jay’Den Addison, a current Towson University student and youth poet laureate in 2025, and Hannah Sawyerr, the second youth poet laureate, were ambassadors before winning their own title. In the decade since her term as laureate, Sawyerr has written two young adult verse novels and is currently collaborating on a middle school book. “The Youth Poet Laureate program showed me I have a voice,” she said. “It was a gift to me because at that time I was feeling very voiceless.” Much of her work centers around sharing her experience as a survivor of sexual assault and advocating for other survivors. The collection she published as youth poet laureate, “For Girls Growing into Their Hips, ” details her coming into womanhood and navigating her changing body, sexuality, and agency. The 28 poems in the book play with format and structure, a technique she has continued with her published verse novels. “Patriarchal Dictionary” is a feminist vocabulary lesson while “Multiple Choice” is structured as a multiple choice test. The former takes words people use to describe women — “bitch,” “hoe,” “lady,” and more — and defines them based on how they’re used against women. The latter is a callout of colorism, using five questions with two rhetorical answer choices each. “I can’t imagine not thinking about poetry,” says Sawyerr. “Poetry feels like such an ordinary part of my life now. It feels so deeply integrated into what I do. I can’t imagine not thinking about it. You wake up today and you’re going to drink a glass of water. I wake up and I’m gonna have poetry on my mind at some point in the day. It always returns to poetry.” The community of Youth Poet Laureate winners and ambassadors is small and tight-knit — Sawyerr is also editing Addison’s in-progress book. Like his predecessors, Addison uses his work to speak to the times. One of his poems, “ICE is Approaching,” captured the moment this past winter as the historic sto Links found in article: - https://baltimorebeat.com/for-more-than-10-years-baltimores-youth-poet-laureate-competition-has-empowered-young-people-to-speak-their-truth/ - https://baltimorebeat.com