The Student Publishing Program

Read last year's questions that teen writers needed answered the most - and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s answers to them!

Read the teen poems we’ve already begun publishing alongside poems by Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser!

The Student Publishing Program has been selected as one of the top 12 creative writing programs in the country. Learn why in our program background section.

Get free access to original writing and publishing support from many of our nation's top educators, experts and writers, including Poet Laureates and six Pulitzer Prize-winners. Free audio, video and Podcasts of poetry slams and interview epiphanies.

See why so many high schools nationwide have already sent written participation interest for the upcoming school year.

The online literary magazine of Massachusetts' Lexington High School, where we've successfully piloted SPP for five years.

Questions or comments? Get in touch with us here.

Ted Kooser

Skater

She was all in black but for a yellow ponytail
that trailed from her cap, and bright blue gloves
that she held out wide, the feathery fingers spread,
as surely she stepped, click-clack, onto the frozen
top of the world. And there, with a clatter of blades,
she began to braid a loose path that broadened
into a meadow of curls. Across the ice she swooped
and then turned back and, halfway, bent her legs
and leapt into the air the way a crane leaps, blue gloves
lifting her lightly, and turned a snappy half-turn
there in the wind before coming down, arms wide,
skating backward right out of that moment, smiling back
at the woman she’d been just an instant before.

Lindzy

Nighttime in Lima

Rosa holds me by the arm when we walk at night
just between wrist and elbow
dragging me like a runaway dog through
labyrinths of curious brown faces,
toothless smiles that sour
behind dark eyes

There are no stars in Lima
I wave
to a group of boys leaning against a
tattered street stand,
They whistle back
and Rosa gives my arm a scolding pinch
We’re quite a sight - she and I -
powerful, four foot Rosa
and a lofty gringo with
skin like the lamp lit haze
too bright for dusty city dimness

Rosa raises a paper creased hand
to hail a taxi
her flat Peruvian nose held high
in the stateliness of ownership
She calls me Iha
And proudly closes my wrist
To her stomach
My mother
with galaxies in her eyes

The dust from the city’s centipede feet
has swallowed up the sky
There are no stars in Lima

Lindzy is a high school student.

Mio K.

Aquarium

I am sorry
That I always get lost
When we come to an aquarium.

But please don’t get mad.

This time it was the yellow fish,
Turning his head this way and that way,
Gleaming under the dark light.
He seemed so very unconfident
About where he was
And who he was.

So I had to walk next to him,
Turning across the hall this way and that way,
Until he got embarrassed
And swam away.

Mio K’s poem was first published in Lexington High School’s Online Literary Journal, 2:25 PM, a publication of The Student Publishing Program.

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