Here are the recipients of the BREW Poetry Award 2025, celebrating poems that capture the essence of human experience and transform it into moving, lyrical artistry.
Table of Contents
The Overall Winner
The Judges’ Poem of the Year title goes to Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills for its inventive, intimate, and haunting meditation on time, memory, and human longing, which bridges the past and present with humor, historical homage, and lyrical reflection.
- Creativity and Originality
The poem uniquely addresses a 19th-century historical figure, merging biography, climate observation, and personal reflection into a letter format that feels both whimsical and profound.
It reimagines a conversation across time, blending historical fact, contemporary experience, and existential questioning, offering a fresh, highly inventive perspective. - Emotional Impact
Through understated humor, longing, and reflective melancholy, the poem evokes nostalgia and wistfulness for both past lives and a changing world. Its lines convey an intimate, vulnerable yearning that lingers with the reader. - Technical Proficiency
The free verse is meticulously crafted, with line breaks and stanzas that create rhythm and allow humor, observation, and reflection to coexist naturally. Word choice is precise and evocative: “summer now rots into last-ditch efforts and expletives over the softness of peaches” balances wit and poignancy. - Depth and Complexity
The poem explores layered themes: historical memory, mortality, environmental change, and the human desire to understand and be understood. It juxtaposes tangible modern details—websites, wind vanes, puzzles—with metaphysical and existential reflection, producing rich interpretive depth. - Unity and Coherence
The poem maintains a consistent voice and perspective, addressing Robert Bailey Thomas throughout. Each stanza contributes to the overarching meditation on human curiosity, the passage of time, and the longing for connection, reinforcing thematic cohesion. - Language and Imagery
Imagery is vivid and precise: “Ticks don’t freeze here anymore,” “the summers sour into complaints over peaches that bruise too easily.” The metaphors transform historical and contemporary details into sensory experiences, making the poem both tangible and imaginative. - Resonance and Relevance
The poem speaks to universal human experiences: curiosity, memory, mortality, and our relationship to time and place. Its historical references, blended with modern observations, create resonance across generations, making it widely relatable. - Voice and Style
The voice is intimate, conversational, reflective, and slightly whimsical, balancing humor with poignancy. The style is distinctive and authentic, engaging the reader with both wit and emotional subtlety. - Innovation and Experimentation
The poem innovates by combining historical letter-writing, lyrical reflection, and existential questioning. It experiments with temporal perspective, tone, and voice, blending factual homage with poetic imagination to push traditional boundaries. - Impact and Memorability
The poem leaves a lasting impression through its humor, reflection, and vivid imagery. Its closing lines—“please say you know what I mean”—linger, creating an intimate and resonant finish that stays with the reader.
📌 Conclusion: Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas excels across all award criteria: it is original, emotionally resonant, technically polished, and thematically layered. It transforms historical homage, contemporary reflection, and existential questioning into lyrical art, making it memorable, engaging, and fully deserving of the Poem of the Year recognition.
All Winners and Finalists
Here’s this year’s complete list of winners and finalists:
- Judges’ Poem / Poet of the Year Winner – Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas / Lauren Mills
- Community’s Poem / Poet of the Year Winner – The Believer / Chris Biscuiti
- Judges’ Pick Category Winners:
- Tertiary Category Winner: Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills
- Open Category Winner: Portrait After Breath by Yvette Rejuso
- Secondary School Category Winner: Ink-stained Silence by Michael Pope
- Educational Institutions with Special Certificate of Recognition:
- Dartmouth College for Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills
- Aklan Catholic College for Portrait After Breath by Yvette Rejuso
- Concordia College for Ink-stained Silence by Michael Pope
- Community’s Pick Category Winners:
- Open Category Winner: The Believer by Chris Biscuiti
- Secondary School Category Winner: Epicaricacy by Cyrus Everglade
- Tertiary School Category Winner: Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills
- Educational Institutions with Special Certificate of Recognition:
- Saint Michaels College SA for Epicaricacy by Cyrus Everglade
- Dartmouth College for Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills
- Judges’ Pick Finalists:
- Community’s Pick Finalists:
- Sterling Silver
- Now
- Footnote
- Cacophony
- Helter Skelter
- Agony Courting
- Why?
- Connections
- The man with the pit in his chest
- Comfort
- For a Moment, Born Again
- crumpled
- Ghost Ship
- When the bell rings for the last time
- Last Words
- Dreams Are the Most Dangerous Thing
- Nite Bikes
- Spooning
- Being Human
- Octopus
- This Poem
- my dearest november
- between the spider
- Our Choice
- A kindling
- I Once Knew a Girl Who Died
- crumbling…
- Hawthorn Widow
- The Couple at Table Nine
- Conversation with a Seed
- The Fire Beneath the Garden
- Ink-stained Silence
- Portrait After Breath
Congratulations to these remarkable poets for their inspiring work and well-deserved recognition!
Important note: We will be contacting the winners and finalists within 1 week from today. If you are one of our winners and you cannot find our email by then in your Inbox, please check your Spam, Junk, or Trash folders. If you cannot find it still, please let us know through our Contact Form.
Complete List of Past Winners
To view the complete list of BREW Poetry Award finalists and winners, click here.
Press Release for This Year’s Announcement
Another version of this announcement also appears on more than 300 others news and media sites. The links to where the press release has been published are (or will appear) below. Note that the report below does not include sites where we have not confirmed that the press release has been published. For more information about our press releases, features, do’s, and don’t’s, please click here.
Other Winners’ Privileges
As part of their prize, all the winners and finalists of this year’s awards will also featured in an anthology. More details will be announced either this year or next year.
All winners and finalists 18 years old and above will also be automatically included as members of the BREW Laureate Council.
The following winners will also be submitted for the Best of the Net 2027 and Pushcart Prize 2026:
- Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas by Lauren Mills
- Portrait After Breath by Yvette Rejuso
- Ink-stained Silence by Michael Pope
- The Couple at Table Nine by Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri
- between the spider by Devashish Makhija
Nominations are Open Year Round
BREW Poetry Award nominations are open all throughout the year. Nominate today!
About the Award
The BREW Poetry Award honours lyrical and rhythmic compositions that touch the soul. The award recognises poetry that fosters a close relationship between the poet and the reader by condensing feelings, experiences, and observations into a select few words. The honour acknowledges poetry’s ability to arouse feelings, spark ideas, and distill the essence of the human spirit.
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Huge congrats to the BREW Poetry Award 2025 recipients! ✨ Poetry that captures the human spirit and turns it into art is truly timeless. Excited to dive into these works and feel the emotions they bring to life. 📝💫
huge congrats to all the winners of the BREW Poetry Award 2025! so inspiring to see such amazing talent being recognized. can’t wait to read their work!
Celebrating creativity at its finest! Kudos to the winners
Congratulations to all the winners! 🏆✨ Poetry has a way of capturing emotions beyond words, and it’s inspiring to see The Chrysalis BREW Project uplifting voices through the BREW Poetry Award 2025. 🌿📖
Beautiful! Congrats to the winners, can’t wait to read these inspiring pieces
congrats 🎉
Congrats to the Winners 🎊
Such a beautiful celebration of creativity and expression! 🌟 Congrats to all the winners for turning words into art that truly touches the soul.
Happy for y’all, congratulations winners!
Congrats winners!
Congrats to the winners of the BREW Poetry Award 2025! 🏆✨ @TCBREWproject celebrating creativity, words, and community 🌟 #TheChrysalisBREWproject #poetry #writingcommunity #writerslift
This announcement is a celebration not just of an award, but of the transformative power of poetry itself. ✨ The way you’ve highlighted Letter to the Editor of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Robert Bailey Thomas shows deep respect for both craft and creativity — honoring how a poem can bridge centuries, weaving history, humor, and longing into something timeless.
Your appreciation of its imagery, voice, and layered meaning makes clear why it stood out: it speaks to memory, change, and connection in a way that feels both intimate and universal. This is more than a winner’s note; it’s a thoughtful recognition of poetry’s ability to move hearts, spark reflection, and remain with us long after the last line. 🌿📖