For a short poem, no longer than 16 lines.    

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

JUDGE

Jenny George is the author of After Image (2024) and The Dream of Reason (2018). She is also a winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Narrative, and elsewhere. Jenny lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works in social justice philanthropy.

For a narrative poem.    

GUIDELINES  

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

JUDGE

Alison C. Rollins holds a Master of Fine Arts from Brown University, a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Science from Howard University. Rollins was named a 2023-2024 Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellow in 2019. A Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, she was a 2016 recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Rollins has been awarded support from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and is a recipient of the 2018 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award. A 2020 Pushcart Prize winner, Rollins is the author of Black Bell (Copper Canyon Press, 2024) and the debut poetry collection Library of Small Catastrophes (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), which was a 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award nominee. Rollins has held faculty as well as librarian appointments at various institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Colorado College, and Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
 

For a lyric poem on any subject.     

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

JUDGE

Richard Siken is a poet, painter, and filmmaker. His book Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, selected by Louise Glück, a Lambda Literary Award, a Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) and I Do Know Some Things(forthcoming, Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Siken is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Lannan Fellowships, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Tucson, Arizona. 

For a prose poem.    
 

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $10 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.
  

JUDGE

Natalie Scenters-Zapico is a fronteriza from El Paso, Texas. She is the author of Lima :: Limón (Copper Canyon Press 2019) and The Verging Cities (Colorado State University 2015). Her third book is forthcoming Spring/Summer 2025 from Copper Canyon Press. Winner of Yale University’s Windham Campbell Prize (2021), she has held a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation (2018), a Lannan Literary Fellowship (2017), and a CantoMundo Fellowship (2015). Her first book, The Verging Cities, won the PEN/America Joyce Osterweil Award (2016), the GLCA New Writer's Award (2016), and the Utah Book Award (2016). Her second book, Lima :: Limón, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize (2020) and shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize (2020). Her books have been reviewed widely in publications like The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, and Publisher's Weekly. She teaches in the undergraduate and MFA creative writing programs at the University of South Florida, where she won a USF 2022 Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award (ORAA) and a 2023-2024 McKnight Junior Faculty Fellowship. She is the director of the Michael Kuperman Memorial Poetry Library at USF. 

For 10 pages of poetry from a manuscript-in-progress.      

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $15 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• Do not submit multiple poems per page. 
• Previously published poems are acceptable for this award. 
• If poems in your Alice Fay Di Castagnola submission have been previously published, you may upload a separate second acknowledgment document with this information. 
• Poems entered as part of the Alice Fay Di Castagnola manuscript may be entered individually in other PSA awards if they haven’t been previously published. 
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.
  

JUDGE

Cynthia Cruz earned a BA in English Literature at Mills College, an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, and an MA in German Language and Literature from Rutgers University. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. Hotel Oblivion, her most recent collection of poems, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the European Graduate School where her research focuses on Hegel.

For a selection of four or five poems that use language in an original way to reflect the encounter of the ordinary and the extraordinary and to take a stand against oppression in any of its forms.     

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $15 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award. The exception: Individual poems submitted to Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award or Robert H. Winner Award may be submitted to another PSA award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

JUDGE

Sumita Chakraborty is a poet and scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection Arrow (Alice James Books (U.S.)/Carcanet Press (U.K.), 2020). Her first scholarly book, Grave Dangers: Poetics and the Ethics of Death in the Anthropocene, is in progress and under advance contract with the University of Minnesota Press, and her second collection of poems is in progress and titled The B-Sides of the Golden Record.

For a manuscript of 10 pages by a mid-career poet who has not had substantial recognition.     

Open to poets 40 and over who have published no more than one full-length collection of poetry. Poets who have not published a book of poetry are also eligible.      

GUIDELINES 

• Awards are open to Poetry Society of America members for free. Become a member and enter all 7 awards for free.
• The fee for non-members is $15 for this award.
• Personal identification must not appear in the submission document anywhere, including the file name.
• Only one entry per award.
• Do not submit multiple poems per page. 
• Previously published poems are acceptable for this award.
• If poems in your Robert H. Winner submission have been previously published, you may upload a separate second acknowledgment document with this information.
• Poems entered as part of the Robert H. Winner manuscript may be entered individually in other PSA awards if they haven’t been previously published. 
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

JUDGE

Claire Wahmanholm received her BA from UW-Madison, her MFA from the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University, and her PhD from the University of Utah. Her chapbook, Night Vision, won the 2017 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM chapbook contest. Her debut full-length collection, Wilder (Milkweed Editions), won the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 Minnesota Book Award. Her second collection, Redmouth, was published with Tinderbox Editions in 2019. Her third collection, Meltwater (Milkweed Editions 2023), is a finalist for the 2024 Minnesota Book Awards and the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Claremont Graduate University. She was a 2020-2021 McKnight Writing Fellow, and the winner of the 2022 Montreal International Poetry Prize for her poem “Glacier.”

 Awarded for the best unpublished poem by a student in grades 9 through 12 from the United States.     

GUIDELINES 

• Personal identification cannot appear in the submission document anywhere.
• Only one entry per author.
• Submissions by more than one author are not eligible.
• You cannot submit the same poem to more than one award.
• The submission must not have been previously published or accepted for publication.
• Simultaneous submissions are acceptable; please withdraw the submission if the poem is accepted elsewhere for publication.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• A poem that has previously won a Poetry Society of America award cannot be resubmitted to any of the awards.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, advisory board committee members, or their immediate families are ineligible.
• All submissions are judged anonymously.

 A SINGLE POEM 

• The fee is $5 for this award.

 MULTIPLE POEMS FROM A TEACHER 

• The fee is $20 for this award.

If you are a teacher submitting multiple poems, please upload all the poems in one document without any identifying information about the authors. In a second document, upload the following contact information for each entry: Poem Title, First Line, email address of author, and email address of teacher.  

JUDGE

Megan Fernandes is a South Asian American writer living in NYC. She was born in Canada and raised in the Philadelphia area. Her family are East African Goans. She is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books, 2015) and Good Boys (Tin House, 2020). Her third book of poetry, I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House), was published in summer 2023. She is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical theory. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University.

Open to any U.S. citizen or anyone currently living within the U. S. who has not published a full-length poetry collection.     

GUIDELINES

• The entry fee is $14.
• Manuscript page length: between 20-30 pages of poetry. This page count includes: title page, table of contents, and poems.
• Poems must be typed.
• No illustrations may be included.
• Multiple submissions are not accepted.
• Manuscripts with more than one author will not be accepted.
• Translations are not eligible. All poems must be original and primarily in English.
• We cannot accept corrections after submission.
• Submissions from Poetry Society employees, officers, or advisory board committee members are ineligible.

SUBMITTING INFORMATION

You can upload two documents:

1) Acknowledgments, if any of the poems have been previously published. 

2) Your manuscript of poems which should include title page, table of contents, and poems.

• Personal identification cannot appear anywhere in the manuscript document

JUDGES

​Monica Ferrell is the author of three books of fiction and poetry, most recently the collection You Darling Thing (Four Way, 2018), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes (Dial Press/Random House) was named one of Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of the Year. Her first collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, was a finalist for the Asian American Writers Workshop Prize in Poetry and won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She has been recognized with residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA Programs at Columbia University and Bennington College, and is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). 

C. Dale Young practices medicine full-time and teaches in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He is the author of a novel in stories, The Affliction, (Four Way, 2018) and five collections of poetry, the most recent being Prometeo (Four Way, 2021). He is a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is the 2017/2018 recipient of the Hanes Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers.