Collegiate Contests

* EXTENDED! ACCEPTING ENTRIES THROUGH NOVEMBER 15, 2025 *

2025 TENNESSEE COLLEGIATE

POETRY CONTEST

The Poetry Society of Tennessee (PST) welcomes all college students in Tennessee to submit one poem for the 2025 Tennessee Collegiate Poetry Contest. All themes, forms, and styles of poetry are welcome!

From the urban to the rural, Tennessee is a deceptively large state, filled with diverse landscapes—all compact with unique charm. How has living in Tennessee, specifically, impacted your life? Whether you're a transplant or a life-long resident—we want to see work that gives a glimpse into a perspective cultivated from living in our beautiful state. All themes, forms, and styles of poetry are welcome! We will pick the top three poems that showcase the best our state has to offer.

PRIZES AND PUBLICATION

Submissions will be read blind. An external judge will choose 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, and any honorable mentions. The judge’s decision will be final.
1st-3rd place winning poems will be published in Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2025-2026. Honorable mention poems may also be published in the anthology at the discretion of the Anthology Editorial Board. Published poets will receive a complimentary anthology copy.
1st-3rd place winners will each receive a monetary prize: 1st $100 / 2nd $50 / 3rd $25. Poets with winning or honorable mention poems will receive a certificate.
By submitting an entry, you agree to give PST first publishing rights should your poem be selected for publication. Following publication, all rights revert to the author. You also grant PST non-exclusive electronic permission to post this work in archives and share it through social media and/or live presentations. We ask that you credit Tennessee Voices Anthology if the work is published elsewhere in the future.
The Tennessee Voices Anthology Editorial Board reserves the right to alter line breaks in poems having more than 50 characters per line, including punctuation marks and spaces. We reserve the right to make minor revisions to works (e.g., spacing conventions for em-dashes, correction of typographical errors).
Pseudonyms of winning poets will be honored in Tennessee Voices Anthology and on winner’s lists; however, legal names are required for issuing checks.

ELIGIBILITY

This contest is open to students at any level of study currently enrolled in a college or university located in Tennessee, including Tennessee-based branches of out-of-state institutions.
Submissions open September 20, 2025, and the deadline is the earlier of NOVEMBER 15, 2025 or when we reach our submission max of 150 poems. If we reach the max before the deadline, we will announce that our max has been met.
Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please notify us immediately at [email protected] if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Entries which do not conform to eligibility requirements will be disqualified. If awarded prize money, poet will be asked to refund any prize money that has been issued for submission in violation of guidelines.
Poems that do not conform with format and submission guidelines may be disqualified. Poets will not be notified if poems are disqualified.

FORMAT AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

For this contest, we prefer poems that fit on one page (single spaced).
Previously unpublished poems only. Poems must be your original work, unpublished in any form, and not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere. Posting on social media will not be considered published.
Your work must be created without the aid of AI assisted technologies.
While PST welcomes a variety of themes and topics, we do not accept explicitly violent or sexual content for our contests.
If submitting a poem with integrated art (e.g., tanka art, erasure poetry) please specify form. Do not submit original art as entries will not be returned (color copies are acceptable).
Submit your entry via student email.
Attach your poem as a Word document. Unless integral to the work, please use Times New Roman or similar font, 11- or 12-point, single-spaced. For poems 2 pages or longer, place the title on all pages.
Ensure no identifying information appears in the document or file name. We recommend you use your poem title as your file name.
In your email body, include artist information: name, educational institution you are attending, college year (freshman, junior, etc.), and home address. Please include a brief third-person bio (50 words or less).
Send submissions to collegiatecontestpst@gmail. Subject: Contest Entry.
By submitting an entry, you agree to give PST first publishing rights should your poem be selected for publication. Following publication, all rights revert to the author. You also grant PST non-exclusive electronic permission to post this work in archives and share it through social media and/or live presentations. We ask that you credit Tennessee Voices if the work is published elsewhere in the future.

QUESTIONS?
Please feel free to reach out with any questions! Email us at [email protected].

PRINTABLE GUIDELINES

2025 Tennessee Collegiate Poetry Contest Judge

JANE HICKS

A native of upper East Tennessee, Jane Hicks is an award-winning poet and quilter. The Jesse Stuart Foundation published her first book, Blood and Bone Remember: Poems from Appalachia in 2005. The book met with popular and critical acclaim, winning the Appalachian Writers Association Poetry Book of the Year prize. It was also nominated for the Weatherford Award given by the Appalachian Studies Association. Jane’s poetry has frequently appeared in journals and literary magazines in the southeast, notably Wind, Now & Then, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Asheville Poetry Review, and Shenandoah. Her poems have been anthologized in Migrants and Stowaways and Literary Lunch published by the Knoxville Writers Guild, Crossing Troublesome 25 years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop, Coal: A Poetry Anthology, We All Live Downstream: Writings About Mountaintop Removal, Southern Poetry Anthology: Contemporary Appalachia, Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, and Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia. Her work appeared in an anthology of poetry with connections to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her “literary quilts” illustrate the works of playwright Jo Carson and novelists Sharyn McCrumb and Silas House. The art quilts have toured with these respective authors and were the subject of a feature in Blue Ridge Country Magazine in an issue devoted to arts in the region. Jane retired from Sullivan County, Tennessee schools after thirty years of teaching. Her second poetry book, published in the fall of 2014 by the University Press of Kentucky, is titled Driving with the Dead. It also won the Appalachian Writers Association Poetry Book of the Year (2015) and was a finalist for the Weatherford Award. Her critically acclaimed third book, The Safety of Small Things, was published by the University of Kentucky Press under Hindman's Fireside Press imprint in early 2024. This book met with wide critical acclaim and was nominated for a number of awards yet to be determined.

2024 Tennessee Collegiate Poetry Contest Winners

1st Place: “Still” by by Tate Haugen, Tusculum, Greeneville
2nd Place: “East TN Autumn” by Kelsey Ann Guy, East Tennessee State University (ETSU), Johnson City
3rd Place: “Thistle’s Crime” by Kiersten Paxton, Tusculum, Greeneville
Honorable Mentions
“Citico” by Major Joshua Frerich II , Tennessee Wesleyan University, Athens
“Chipped Front Tooth” by Erika Perez Cortazar, ETSU, Johnson City

Tate Haugen is a Wisconsin born writer who moved to Appalachia for college. His free time is spent exploring nature and what it means to be a hunter. He is an avid outdoorsman which his writing shows.

Kelsey Ann Guy is a junior at East Tennessee State University studying Media & Communications with minors in Creative Writing, Fine & Performing Arts, and French. She is a scholar of the Honors College at ETSU for poetry. She hopes to pursue a career in public relations and continue creative writing after graduation.

Kiersten Paxton was born and raised in Bristol, TN and is currently an English major at Tusculum University. She’s worked as the Assistant Fiction Editor for the international journal The Tusculum Review. Her poem “Take Longer” was published in Tennessee Voices Anthology, 2022-2023. In 2023, she won the Curtis Owens Literary awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Drama. She enjoys music, books, and experimenting with different writing styles and genres. She’d like to become a full-time writer after her graduation.

ABOUT THE JUDGE (2024)

A poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is the poetry editor for Madville Publishing and the copy editor for Chapter 16, the literary website of Humanities Tennessee. She is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, Shenandoah, and many others. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose. Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee. She is an eighth-generation Tennessean.

July 1, 2025, Linda began a term as Knoxille, Tennessee's 5th Poet Laureate. Learn more and get her schedule here.