Announcing the Vincent Poetry Prize Winners
In honor of Edna St. Vincent Millay and her legacy as a groundbreaking poet in so many ways, including being the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Millay House Rockland is excited to announce the winners of the inaugural Vincent Poetry Prize.
Judge Julia Bouwsma, Maine State Poet Laureate 2021-2026 says, “It was wonderful to see poets recognizing and working with so many aspects of Millay . . .”, and we couldn’t agree more.
Join us for a reading with Julia and the winners on September 15, 7pm Eastern on Zoom. Click the button below to find out more.
Vincent Poetry Prize Winner
“June” is a spare and gorgeously rendered poem in which the embedded Millay line—House without air, I leave you and lock the door—functions as a central, impeccably placed metaphor for grief. “I have been here before,” observes the speaker, closing the door only to step out, restless and slightly stunned, into the reverberating openness of loss. Quiet repetitions, simple yet luminous imagery, and subtly echoing sonics form a series of slightly disorienting apertures, and we walk through them, alongside the speaker, “chasing any air that moves” as we navigate the blurred line between present and memory, between what we cannot hold onto and what we can never outrun.
—Julia Bouwsma
Editor’s Choice Award
“Underworld” begins with an epigraph from Millay’s “Prayer to Persephone.” In Millay’s poem, the speaker calls upon Persephone to comfort a dead beloved and reassure her that “it is not so dreadful here,” unexpectedly depicting Persephone as a potentially maternal figure. By contrast, “Underworld,” a persona poem set in the voice of Persephone, subverts Millay’s own mythological subversion. This Persephone openly rejects Millay’s call, stating flatly that “the name / I am called by others is not / the name I call myself,” and rather than offer pat reassurance, she rejects any notion that death might be “dreadful.” Instead, she prefers the land of the dead where she is “cushioned by darkness, / soft and without hurt” to the land of the living with its lingering “smell of bitter green.” I love this poem’s witty engagement with Millay’s poem, its stark and haunting language (somewhat reminiscent of a Lousie Glück poem), and its clear and powerfully rendered voice.
—Julia Bouwsma
Honorable Mentions
It was such an honor and a pleasure to read these poems. I was blown away by the range, passion, and ambition of all of the finalist poems. It was wonderful to see poets recognizing and working with so many aspects of Millay: the engagement with form (sonnet crowns! double golden shovels!), the exploration and subversion of mythology, the love poems, the grief poems, the emotional intensity, the challengingly fraught passion of the political poem (which Millay herself sometimes struggled to navigate). What a wonderful tribute to her work these poems are! Thank you so much for the chance to spend time with them.
—Julia Bouwsma
Sign up to attend the live reading on Zoom, Tuesday September 15 @ 7pm Eastern
The Vincent Poetry Prize
NOTE: Submissions are closed for this year. Join our mailing list for notices of future poetry contests from Millay House Rockland.
The Vincent Poetry Prize is awarded annually to one poem of exceptional vision and quality that is in conversation with a poem by Millay. We encourage you to read her poems and consider her obsessions, for example, poems of place, eros, and political protest, and poems in the sonnet form. Each poem submitted uses a line from a poem by Millay.
The winning poem, along with the Editor’s Choice and honorable mentions, are published online in the summer edition of The Third Fig Review, the literary journal of Millay House Rockland. An online launch reading to celebrate the winning poems and poets is held in late summer.
$500 prize for the Winner
$200 for the Editors’ Choice
2026 Judge: Julia Bouwsma, Maine Poet Laureate, 2021-26
Guidelines
Submit 1 previously unpublished poem. (You may submit more than once for an additional submission fee for each submission.)
Reading fee of $10 per entry. A limited number of complimentary entries are available to poets for whom the fee presents a hardship. Contact us at vincentmillayrockland@gmail.com to request a fee waiver. Submission fees are used to pay winners, the final judge, and web costs. The editorial staff is composed of Millay House Rockland board members, unpaid. Millay House Rockland is a nonprofit literary arts organization. You will be invited to add a reduced cost membership for $30 to your entry and to opt in to emails from Millay House Rockland.
Each poem submitted must include one line from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Please note the poem’s line and title at the end of your poem. The line must also appear as your title, an epigraph, or as a line within your poem.
Submissions are read anonymously; kindly refrain from placing your name anywhere on the attached poem file. Submissions with identifying information will be disqualified without refund.
The editors will consider all submissions for publication.
Simultaneous submissions welcome. Please notify us immediately of publication elsewhere by leaving a message in Submittable.
We cannot accept entries after the deadline or changes to poems after submission.
We follow the CLMP Guidelines for contests and are committed, in all we do, to the highest ethical standards. If you are a personal friend, family member, or student of any MHR board member, editor of The Third Fig Review, or of the judge, please refrain from submitting.
Submissions are capped at 200, and will reopen in Spring 2027.