The Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize recognizes outstanding work by student writers in the 11th grade in the U.S. or abroad. Contest judges are poets on the Princeton University Creative Writing faculty, which includes Michael Dickman, Paul Muldoon, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, Jenny Xie, and Monica Youn.
The 2020-21 contest deadline was Friday, November 27, 2020, at 11:59 p.m. (EST).
CONTEST WINNERS + UPDATES
Winners for last year’s contest are posted below as of March 19, 2020.
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PRIZES
First Prize – $500, Second Prize – $250, Third Prize – $100
A note for high school teachers:
Thank you for your interest in the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize. While we encourage the inclusion of poetry in the high school English curriculum, we ask you to please refrain from using the contest as an occasion to require all your students to submit a poem as a homework assignment. If you read the poems from the past student winners, you’ll see that they all carry a sense of urgency and necessity that is difficult to conjure when a student is obliged to submit a poem. Ideally, we hope motivated students will choose to enter the contest, and that they’ll come to see the writing and sharing of their poems as a joy rather than an obligation.
We’d also like to recommend the following poetry anthologies:
Poem-a-Day: 365 Poems for Every Occasion, edited by Tamar Brazis
20th Century Pleasures, edited by Robert Hass
The Best of the Best American Poetry, edited by Robert Pinsky
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can submissions for the poetry contest be poems that are currently submitted to other contests?
Yes.
Can the poems also be poems that have won other contests?
Yes.
Can the poems be previously published?
Yes. If the poem(s) was published, please provide a reference for the date and media of publication.