School of Social Work announces winners of National Poetry Contest for Social Workers

Monday, April 20, 2015

The University of Iowa School of Social Work, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has announced the winners of the third annual National Poetry Contest for Social Workers.

The contest aims to acknowledge the creative talent of social workers and to draw attention to social work as a profession. This year’s contest was judged by Ellen Szabo, Justin Jannise, Tiffany Flowers, and Jennifer Adrian Leeney.

The top three submissions were awarded cash prizes, with the first place winner also receiving half-price admission to the annual Creative Writing Seminar for Helping Professionals on July 17-20. All submissions are published in a digital chapbook on the School of Social Work website, and the winning poems are also published in the spring issue of The New Social Worker.

  • 1st Place: Marjorie Thomsen earned her MSW from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. She worked for many years with older Vietnamese refugees in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Her first collection of poetry, "Pretty Things Please" (WordTech/Turning Point), will be published in 2016. She received the New England Poetry Club's 2012 Firman Houghton Award. Marjorie grew up in Richmond, VA and currently lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband and three children.
  • 2nd Place: Nahomi Martinez is an MSW student at the University of Texas at El Paso. Nahomi has worked with the veteran population since she was a junior undergraduate. As a Masters student, Nahomi has been able to expand on her knowledge about women veterans and the challenges they experience. Nahomi looks forward to working with this population in the future.
  • 3rd Place: Joel Izlar is a community social worker and PhD student at the University of Georgia. Izlar has been notably active in working to reduce electronic and food waste, the digital divide, food insecurity, inequalities in resource allocation and distribution, homelessness, labor rights violations, and structural deficits in community organizations. He is currently researching the intersection between grassroots organizations, technology, and environmental justice.

Those interested in participating in the 2015-16 contest should submit their work online prior to the January 1, 2016 deadline. 

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.