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. The jury consists of members of the Princeton University Creative Writing faculty such as Michael Dickman, Yiyun Li, Paul Muldoon, James Richardson, Tracy K. Smith, Susan Wheeler, and Monica Youn.
Submissions for the 2018-19 contest are now closed.
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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