The Poetry Society of Vermont is pleased to announce that submissions for the 2026 Summer Contests will open on June 1st and close at midnight on July 31, 2026. The Summer Contests winners and honorable mentions will be selected by judges who are experienced poets and not affiliated with the Poetry Society of Vermont. We will announce this year’s judges in the coming weeks on the PSOV website and Monday morning poetry newsletter.

The 2025 Summer Contests & Troubadour Awards results are now in. There were a total of 259 submissions of wonderful poetry.  We had nine outstanding judges (2 for the Davis & Peach Troubadour Awards & 7 Summer Contest judges) who all expressed pleasure and honor at reading these wonderful poems. They mentioned the  difficulty in choosing a winner and honorary mention because of the excellent writing. There were a few snafus with the length of poems, duplications and formatting but nothing was insurmountable.  PSOV thanks all the poets for their beautiful words and participation that made the summer contests a great success.  We are grateful for the professional judges who gave of their time for the PSOV Summer Contests & Troubadour Awards.  It is our pleasure to announce the winners listed below.

Troubadour Awards:*

Summer Contests: 

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 *Troubadour Awards are not Summer Contests, they are poems selected from the current Mountain Troubadour. They will not be reprinted in the Troubadour but will receive special mention in the next edition of TMT and will be published on the PSOV Website.

the Poetry Society of Vermont Executive Board

The Poetry Society of Vermont is pleased to announce that the 2025 Summer Contests submissions will open on June 16th and close at midnight on July 31, 2025. The Summer Contests winners and honorable mentions will be selected by judges who are experienced poets and not affiliated with the Poetry Society of Vermont. We will announce who will be this year’s judges on the PSOV website and Monday morning PSOV Poetry newsPost in the coming weeks. 

PSOV Summer Contests winners and second place poems (Honorable Mentions) will be published in The Mountain Troubadour 2026. The Summer Contests are open to all PSOV Members, who may submit one poem to each of the seven contests (please follow the contest guidelines and specific contest theme/line length requirements,) except* if they won last year’s contest they cannot submit a poem this year to that specific contest (*new in 2025.) The Troubadour Awards will also be judged at this time and announced in the 2026 Mountain Troubadour.  We look forward to your submissions and enriching PSOV’s literary journal, The Mountain Troubadour. (If you are not a member, join today and enjoy the many benefits of being a member of the Poetry Society of Vermont.)

Please read and follow the submission guidelines:

• 2025 Summer Contests Submissions (website link)
• 2025 Summer Contests Overview & Guidelines (Document)