Art Pollination: Building Food Justice Through Creativity

We are looking for poets to submit their work focusing on food justice to be performed at a poetry slam as part of the City of Orlando led initiative, “Art Pollination.”

ABOUT THE POETRY SLAM

A poetry slam event focused on food justice themes. Poets will be provided with background information on food justice topics to guide their creative process. We are looking for 15 poets to participate in the poetry slam and the winners will receive cash prizes!

$1500

$500

$250

$100

PRIZES

$50

$100

 Youngest Finalist

PROGRAM

A maximum of 15 poets will be selected to participate in the poetry slam happening on August 5, 2025

15 Poets in the 1st round

Top 5 poets will advance to final round

7 - 9:30 p.m.

The Great Southern Box

Catering by Chick-Fil-A

RULES & CRITERIA

All poets must physically be present to participate.

Poets must perform their themed poem in round 1 and their own poem in round 2, should they advance.

No props or music may accompany any poems. All content must be authored solely by the poet.

All poems must be submitted by the deadline - July 14, 2025.

Performances must be no more than 3 minutes in length.

July 14

Poem Submissions Due

July 21

Qualifying Poets Announced

August 5

Food Justice Poetry Slam

Stimulate Your Creativity!

Video Resources

Hunger Pains

Poems

Food

The Gospel of Barbecue

Q&A

  • An initiative that strives to create awareness and solutions regarding topics such as food insecurity and hunger amongst our communities. 

  • You will receive an email explaining that you have been selected to participate. Note that a submission does not equate to being accepted.

  • There will be two total rounds of poetry. The order of the first round will be determined by random number selection.

  • Point deductions will apply to any performances beyond 3 minutes and 10 seconds. The highest and lowest scores among the judges will not count. The three middle scores will be added together to determine each poet's score for each round.

  • In the event of a tie, dropped scores will be reintroduced.

    1. Knowledge about food cultivation.

    2. How to expand food access.

    3. Foods/plants as medicine.

    4. Community-based food justice operations.

    5. Historic food injustices on BIPOC communities.

The Food Justice Poetry Slam 2025 is supported in part with funding from the City of Orlando's Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge Grant 2025.

To learn more about the Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge, visit publicartchallenge.bloomberg.org. To learn more about Bloomberg Philanthropies, visit www.bloomberg.org.

Collaborators