dTHS Annual Calaveras Literarias Contest

Life, death, and a little satire: for the second year in a row, the dTHS Spanish department hosted its Calaveras Literarias competition, inviting both students and staff to enter and celebrate creativity and culture. A Calavera Literaria is a traditional Mexican poem that’s written during Día de los Muertos, and it often uses humor or satire to reflect on life and death. While they are traditionally written in Spanish, de Toledo allows for submissions in four different languages: Spanish, English, ASL, and Hebrew. In addition, there is also a category for faculty. To encourage participation, prizes are awarded for first, second, and third place. 

Across all five categories, here are this year’s highlighted winners:

Mr. Shapiro

Mr. Shapiro won first place in the teacher category, and it was his first year entering this competition. His Calavera Literaria, titled “The Last Dance,” incorporated the famous Dylan Thomas poem, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” which Mr. Shapiro reports, “I’ve always liked it a lot.” He adds that, “it has the theme of overcoming death, and Judaism also has ideas about how God will defeat or destroy death at the end of time.” 

When asked if he came across anything meaningful in this process, he responded with, “I felt satisfied when I was able to weave together different cultural references: English literature, Jewish theology, and a Hispanic cultural motif.” 

Hannah T.

Hannah T. (‘27) won the first place award in the Spanish category. Although she entered the competition last year in English, this was her first time entering in the Spanish category. Her Calavera Literaria, titled “La Muerte Del Sueño,” talked about the death of sleep. Hannah said, “I enjoyed the storytelling element of writing my Calavera Literaria, and I also had fun coming up with the rhyme scheme.”

Zoe K.

As a de Toledo student who has completed all levels of American Sign Language (ASL), Zoe K. (‘26) won first place in the ASL category. Her Calavera Literaria, “Death in ASL Class,” was about Lady Death taking an ASL class. This was her first year entering the competition, and she says, “I entered the contest because I thought it would be a funny idea to talk about La Catrina being in ASL!” 

Drew C.

Drew C. (‘29) won the contest in the English category, and this was also his first year entering the competition. When asked what his poem featured, he said, “My Calavera Literaria was about math class, La Katrina did poorly on her test, and the teacher coincidentally disappeared a day later.” 

His poem included a description of La Catrina “enraged, and she started lashing out and throwing fits.” When interviewed about his inspiration for the piece, Drew reported, “Mr Masserman encouraged me to participate, and my math teacher, Mrs Melikian, was my writing inspiration.”

Mr. Soltis

Although he didn’t win, Mr. Soltis entered with a creative Calavera Literaria titled, “La Catrina Comes for the Jags.” Like most participants, it was his first year entering the contest. Mr. Soltis said, “I was inspired to write because it seemed it wouldn’t take much time and I liked my idea of killing all the teachers.” 

His Calavera Literaria walks through all the different ways teachers at dTHS died and includes Ms. Schmidt, Mr. Wiebe, and Orit, to name a few. When asked if he took anything meaningful away from his writing process, he responded, “It was a mistake to let the journalism class judge poetry as there seemed to be a fear of the dark which is in fact the actual nature of Calavera Literaria.”

Other second and third place winners include: Jake Tirsch, Nate Goldstein, Mylee Shechter, Shiloh Rosner, Dikla, Mr. Stein, Aiden Cabessa, and Aidan Resnik. Thank you to everyone who participated this year and made it a great contest. Congratulations to all the winners. To read the winners’ poems, click here!