FPS: Roots and Branches Challenge Winners

Welcome to the final Challenge Winners Announcement of the year and thank you for being part of Vocal in 2025.

Before we begin, a quick note: the first set of challenges for next year are now live. We hope you’ll take a look, and stay tuned, there’s more ahead, including some major announcements coming to Vocal in 2026.

Now, to Roots and Branches.

This challenge asked poets to consider what grounds them and what carries them forward. What emerged wasn't a single answer, but a tension between staying and reaching, and that's gave many of these poems their shape.

These are the pieces that stayed with us.

🏆 Winners

Monk(ey) Mind by Marilyn Glover

Marilyn Glover's Monk(ey) Mind uses repetition and wordplay to slow a restless mind and return it to center. Grounded in breath and self-compassion, the poem shows how steady practice becomes a way forward.

Nerve Endings by Edward Swafford

Edward Swafford's piece stood out for its intensity and commitment. The language is heavy and deliberate, pushing against familiar ideas of lineage and refusing to soften the experience.

wander-root by Gina C.

Gina C. traces ancestry through roots, rhizomes, and wandering branches, reaching toward a past shaped by absence and uncertainty. The image of “tumble-weed meander” lingers, capturing the poem’s sense of motion, absence, and search for connection.

Foresee (4C) by AfroVerse

Foresee (4C) by AfroVerse explores Black hair as inheritance, resistance, and identity. With clear structure and vivid detail, this remarkable poem honors what is carried on the body while refusing the voices that seek to diminish it.

Here I Stand by A. J. Schoenfeld

A. J. Schoenfeld's Here I Stand honors the women whose care and guidance made growth possible. Its steady focus on ascent and legacy gives the piece a quiet, lasting weight.

🎖️ Runners-up

• the day, back again by Mackenzie Davis
• Skulls under the growth by Sam Spinelli
• Arsenal Oak by Harper Lewis
• Midlife by Hannah Moore
• my story hides by John Cox
• Living Words by Pixel Floyd
• Where Lies my Baby Teeth by Antoni De'Leon
• A Second Hibiscus by Stephen A. Roddewig
• Casting for Answers by Paris Rosemont
• Turned Tree by D. J. Reddall
• The Last of the First by Dana Crandell
• Sway by Aspen Marie
• Red Dirt Roots by Novel Allen
• where I come from by Raistlin Allen
• Dreams of the Acorn-Child by John R. Godwin

🏅 Honorable Mentions

• I Landed Here by Natalie Wilkinson
• Growth by Jessica McGlaughlin
• Growing Into It by Alison McBain
• In Spite of Who I’ve Been by Aubrey Rebecca
• Two Trees by Ian Vince
• Toppling the Family Tree by K.B. Silver
• Young Blood by Camille Ora-Nicole
• The Tree That Silently Watched by Stacey Mataxis Whitlow (SMW)
• Bifurcated Divides by Corvus
• Uprooted, Tumbled, but Hopeful by Lana V Lynx

Check out the latest on Vocal Challenges.