2026 Contest is NOW OPEN! Here’s the 2026 Annual Poetry Society of Texas Contest Brochure, hot off the presses – ready, set, GO!
UPDATE 2/24/2026: Contest brochure has been updated. Below is a summary of the corrections made to the 01/30/2026 original:
5 – added ” (formerly of Mansfield)”
18 – removed “Ivy”
21 – added “of humor”
33 – contest rule reference “C.7.” changed to “C.4.”
37 – contest rule reference “C.7.” changed to “C.4.”
38 – added “except prose”
55 – topic should have been “first love” (Sorry, Bridgerton fans!)
60 – topic should have been “endurance”
62 – capitalized “Joy”
65 – topic should have been “a pilot or pilots”
76 – “format” should have been “form”
97 – clarified that entrant should never have won a FIRST PLACE in any PST annual contest.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If dropped into a mailbox, it may take longer than before for your envelope to be postmarked. HOWEVER, USPS states that, “a customer can ensure that a postmark is applied to his or her mailpiece, and that the date on the postmark matches the date of mailing, by visiting a Postal Service retail location and requesting a manual (local) postmark at the retail counter when tendering their mailpiece. Manual postmarks will be applied free of charge.” See also Postmarking Myths and Facts – Statements – Newsroom – About.usps.com
First place winning poems may not be published in any media before they appear in the Poetry Society of Texas annual anthology, A Book of the Year. Thereafter, all rights revert to the authors. Authors of all poems entered which did not win First Place retain all rights to the poems they entered.
————–TO VIEW ANNUAL RESULTS—————