Today, April 22, recognized as Earth Day, the Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce the 2022 winners of the Treehouse Climate Action Poem Prize, which honors exceptional poems that help make real for readers the gravity of the vulnerable state of our environment. The winners were selected by poet Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs and environmental thought-leader and activist Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali. This annual prize was launched in 2019 with generous support from Treehouse Investments, LLC, a social impact firm.
The winning poems and poets are:
First place: “Good Grief” by KB Brookins (to be published in Poem-a-Day on April 23, 2022)
Second place: “Apostrophe” by Liza Katz Duncan (to be published in Poem-a-Day on April 30, 2022)
Third place: “Do/Do Not” by Nisha Atalie (to be published in Poem-a-Day on May 7, 2022)
First place will receive $1,000; second place, $750; and third place, $500. In addition, all three poems will be published in the popular Poem-a-Day series, which is distributed to 500,000+ readers.