Poetry certificate templates and badges
3 free designs. A set is one design as a badge, a landscape or a portrait certificate, or all three.
Free for up to 20 recipients a year
Scanned Line set
Badge · Landscape · Portrait
A poetry certificate template gives schools, libraries, literary societies, writing groups and poetry festivals a ready page for the poets they honour. It is handed out at the prize-giving or the closing reading of a competition, to the winners, the runners-up and the commended entries, and in classrooms as a poetry certificate for students after a term of writing or a slam.
A good poetry award names the poet and the competition, says which category and placing it marks, and gives a short citation: what the judges admired in the poem. It carries the date, the judge's or organiser's signature and an ID that lets anyone check it.
The designs come as certificates in A4 and US Letter and as digital badges, so a winner can frame the paper copy and add the badge to a website, a submission bio or a LinkedIn profile.
Wording
What to write on a poetry certificate
Use these lines as they are, or as a start for your own. Every template comes with wording you can change in the studio.
Wording for poetry award winners
- “Awarded first prize in the open category for a poem of rare clarity and music.”
- “In recognition of a winning poem, judged for its imagery, its command of form and a voice entirely its own.”
- “For the runner-up poem in this year's competition, chosen from more than two hundred entries.”
Poem certificate wording for students
- “For writing a poem that made the whole class listen.”
- “Highly commended in the school poetry competition for bold, vivid language.”
- “In recognition of a term of careful reading, drafting and writing poetry.”
Short lines for the badge or the email
- “Winner, open poetry category.”
- “Your poem was chosen. Congratulations.”
Why send it with Hyperstack
More than a PDF
Customize the template free. When it is ready, send it to everyone at once.
One design, every name
Upload a spreadsheet and Hyperstack makes a award for each person on it, in one go.
Sent by email
Each recipient gets their own email and link. You see who opened it, downloaded it and shared it.
Anyone can verify it
The QR code opens a page that proves the certificate is real. Recipients add it to LinkedIn in one click.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Yes, when the poet agrees. The poem's title tells the reader exactly which work won, and it makes the certificate a record of the poem as well as the poet. If entries were judged blind, add the title only after the results are public.
Judges usually pick one first prize, one or two runners-up and a short list of commended or highly commended poems. Commended entries are strong work that came close; giving them a certificate with the same design and a different placing line keeps the honour clear.
Often a published poet invited as judge, sometimes with a panel of teachers, editors or librarians. The certificate is usually signed by the head judge and by the person who runs the competition, such as the festival director or the head of English.
An award on its own is not a publication. But when the competition prints the winning poem in an anthology or posts it online, most magazines treat the poem as already published, so poets should check the rules before sending it elsewhere.
Most schools and libraries use bands such as ages 7 to 11, 11 to 14 and 14 to 18, each with its own winner. Younger bands are often judged more on imagination and feeling, older ones also on control of form and sound.
They are scansion, the notation readers use to mark metre: a cup over an unstressed syllable, a stroke over a stressed one and a bar between feet. The title, Award for Excellence in Verse, scans as four iambs, and each mark sits over its own syllable.
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