The Green-Schools National Marine Creative Writing Competition 2025 is now open for entries! This is the fifth year of this inspiring competition, and Green-Schools Marine Officers can’t wait to see what wonderful stories and poems are submitted this year.
The theme for this year’s competition is “My Ocean” . What is the importance of the ocean to the characters in your story? Perhaps, in your story someone owns the ocean, or maybe you look at the ocean from the perspective of a sea creature living in it, or write a poem about what the ocean means to you. We look forward to reading all of the entries inspired by this theme! This year, we are also excited to be supporting the Irish Ocean Literacy Network’s “My Ocean” campaign, which aims to gather perspectives from people all over Ireland about what the ocean means to them, and selected entries may be showcased as part of this three-year campaign.
The aim of the competition is for individual students to create an original piece of fictional creative writing inspired by the theme “My Ocean”. The piece may take the form of either a short story or a poem and must be no more than 500 words in length.
The competition is open to primary and secondary schools that are registered Green-Schools currently working on, or previously awarded for, the Global Citizenship: Marine Environment theme. Entries must adhere to the Terms and Conditions and be submitted by the deadline of midnight, Friday, 28th February, 2025.
There are three categories for entry:
Entries from Special Schools are strongly encouraged. Special School entries may be entered into whichever age category is deemed most appropriate by the student’s teacher.
There will be one overall national winner for each age category: each 1st place winner will receive a trophy, €100 book token, and a whale or dolphin adoption from the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group. 2nd place winners will receive a trophy and a €75 book token; 3rd place winners will receive a trophy and a €50 book token. All winners will receive a printed booklet anthology including their winning entry. Additional or equivalent prizes may be offered subject to availability.
Before entering, please read the full Terms & Conditions, which can be downloaded through the link below. Entries may be typed or handwritten but must be submitted through the official online entry form. Postal entries will not be accepted.
For queries, contact the Green-Schools Marine team at marine@greenschoolsireland.org
The Green-Schools National Marine Creative Writing Competition is proudly supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
Green-Schools, An Taisce, Registered Charity Number: CHY 4741 / CRA No: 20006358 / Company No: 12469
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