Get to know Olivia Stevens, Delaware’s poetry queen for 2025

This year’s state poetry crown belongs to Olivia Stevens, a high schooler who fell in love with creative writing just before the pandemic.

“As I explored writing styles for prose, a book written in verse called ‘Other Words for Home,’ by Jasmine Warga, really stood out to me,” said Stevens, a junior at  Mount Sophia Academy in Brookside, who won the 2025 Delaware Poetry Out Loud competition a week ago.

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She said she loved the simplicity of the book and how word choice affected the overall emotional impact.

“That book really led me to deep dive into poetry; how it captures such strong emotion and feel with so little words,” she said.

Stevens’ favorite poems

As an avid reader, her favorite poems and poets are always changing.

“I really have enjoyed Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade‘ and have fallen in love with all of Walt Whitman’s works including ‘O Captain! My Captain!‘,” she said. “The poem that has truly captured my heart recently is ‘Architect’s Watercolor‘ by Arthur Sze.”

At the competition, held at the Smyrna Opera House, Stevens recited: “Sanctuary” by Jean Valentine, “Crossing the Bar” by Lord Alfred Tennyson, and “Architect’s Watercolor.”

“‘Sanctuary’ really stood out to me,” she said. “At the heart of the poem, it is really that longing for human connection; asking those big questions and sharing our experiences. In today’s world of small talk, I found myself in the poem longing for that deeper connection.”

She picked ‘Crossing the Bar’ as a tribute to her love of Tennyson and shared beliefs that there is a greater life after death.

“The minute I read ‘Architect’s Watercolor’ I knew it was for me,” she said. “The fluidity and richness in word choice perfectly matched its topic of wanting to experience life not confined to to-do lists and tasks. This poem perfectly encapsulates how there is beauty in everything.”

As an aspiring vocalist and choral conductor, Stevens aims to double major in vocal performance and creative writing for her undergraduate degree, and she’s looking into different conservatories and liberal arts colleges including the Peabody Conservatory and Johns Hopkins University.

“I love how performing poetry gives me a place to be vulnerable, asking the big world questions through the purest form of our language, and connecting with the audience through shared emotions and experiences,” she said. “When we recite poetry, whether on a stage or around the kitchen table, we break down the differences between each other, recognizing that we all feel emotions and we all live.”

In her free time, Stevens is a creative writer.

Still in her teens, she’s already written and published my first book, titled “The Locket Mystery,” and she’s currently working on her second book told in a combination of verse and prose.

She also loves engineering, and is the team captain of a tech challenge robotics team and the main builder of their 18″ by 18″ competition robot.

“My poetry has won local and regional awards, and even though I mostly write in free verse, I also love experimenting with different forms of poetry,” she said. “I am a classical singer and love learning new music that challenges my vocal ability.”