2025 Edna St. Vincent MillayStudent Poetry Contest

1. Students must enter in the category that corresponds with their age on April 1, 2025.
2. Students are only permitted to submit one (1) poem. Submitting multiple poems will result in disqualification.
3. Poems must be entirely original work created by the student entering the contest. Poems containing plagiarism, generated by artificial intelligence, or written with the help of others, will be disqualified.
4. Poems must be submitted in English, although inclusion of occasional words or phrases in a foreign language is permitted.
5. The Millay Society suggests that participants consider submitting a poem that reflects one of the major themes of Millay’s poetry–nature, feminism, emotions and relationships, social and political injustice—but this is not a requirement.
6. Poems must be no less than 8 lines. The poem’s title does not count as a line of the poem. Stanza breaks also do not count as a line of the poem. Any submission that does not meet these length requirements will be disqualified.
7. If, in the judges’ unanimous opinion, a poem is determined to include  language that is vulgar, offensive, or hateful, the poem will be disqualified.
8. Students should use the “Enter” key to start a new line, indicating all intentional line breaks.
9. If the poem has been submitted to another competition or publication, students should include this information on the cover page.
10. All poems remain the property of the author.

The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a widely celebrated poet during her lifetime and a major influence on our nation’s cultural life during the post-World War I era. No poet in her generation was as adored, or as widely read and quoted, as Edna St. Vincent Millay. The English author Thomas Hardy proclaimed that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

In her poetry, Millay used classic poetic forms to introduce bold new themes of women’s equality and freedom to make their own choices, as well as themes of social and political injustice. In 1923, The New York Times named Millay “America’s poet of the future.” Throughout her life Millay published ten books of poetry, an opera libretto, songs, plays, essays, short stories, and satirical sketches.

Desiring a quieter life than bustling New York City could provide, Millay answered a March 1925 New York Times advertisement for an abandoned berry farm on a hilltop in Austerlitz, New York, a few hours’ drive north of Manhattan. She and her husband Eugen Boissevain, bought the property in May 1925 and, over the next several years, transformed it into an elegant country estate, as well as a working farm, with flower, herb, and vegetable gardens; guest houses; a tennis court overlooking the Taconic Range, and a sunken garden with a spring-fed swimming pool. She claimed a small outbuilding in a blueberry field as her writing cabin. Steepletop became Millay’s sanctuary, where she composed and assembled many of her poetry collections and entertained family members and friends. She lived on the property until her death in October 1950.