About

Each year’s prompt follows a museum exhibit; the current one, drawn from Bill Mauldin’s wartime cartoons, asks for a poem on an everyday soldier’s life and combat challenges. Poems are 14-line sonnets of 75 to 200 words, 19-line villanelles of 130 to 250 words, or free verse of 100 to 300 words. The bibliography needs five different sources, each annotated in 3 to 8 sentences. Students submit one typed PDF, one entry each, and entries may be checked for AI assistance. Junior (grades 7 to 9) and Senior (grades 10 to 12) divisions award $750, $500, and $250 for the top three places, plus $100 honorable mentions.

The bibliography makes this as much a research exercise as a poetry contest, and an entry without it is incomplete. The museum publishes no entry totals, so selectivity cannot be stated; the prize list is small, and winners are named by March.

A prize shows a student can turn historical research into a controlled poetic form.