2025 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest

 

Helen Schaible was a poet, mother, teacher, classicist. The Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest was established in her memory in 1998 by the Poets Club of Chicago and funded by a gift from Helen’s daughters Jane Edwards, Lucy Parker, and Katherine Martin, and her son, the late David Schaible.

 

Categories & Rules

Rules & Submission Period

Submission Period: June 1 – July 15, 2025. Free and open to all.

Categories:

  • Traditional Sonnet. Shakespearean or Petrarchan

  • Modern Sonnet. Sonnets that violate one or more of the rules of traditional sonnets but still contain what the Poetry Foundation website refers to as a “ghost” of the sonnet form. Modern sonnets may or may not be rhymed, and they may experiment with various meters or not use a regular meter at all. Usually they are 14 lines, but this may also vary slightly.

Rules:

  • Poets can enter ONLY ONE sonnet per category. This means only 1 or 2 poems total per poet.

  • Entries must be original and unpublished. Submitted sonnets cannot be published in a book/journal, posted online or on social media, or under consideration for publication elsewhere. Also, poems cannot be created with the help of any artificial intelligence applications.

  • One award per poet. Poets can only win or be noted in one of the two sonnet categories.

How to Enter the Contest:

Submit contest entries electronically using the submission form. To access the Online Sonnet Contest Form CLICK HERE. The form requires that each sonnet submitted is attached as either a Word or PDF file. You cannot paste the sonnets into the form. They must be attached as documents.

All entries must be received by midnight CDT, July 15, 2025. No late entries will be accepted. Have questions? Email poetsandpatrons@gmail.com.

Judging

All judging is done anonymously, with no input from anyone associated with Chicagoland Poets & Patrons. All judges’ decisions are final.

2025 Traditional Sonnet Judge: Allen Braden
Allen Braden is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood, a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award judged by Mary Oliver, and Elegy in the Passive Voice, winner of the University of Alaska’s Midnight Sun Chapbook Contest. He has published recently in The Laurel Review, Interim and Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology.

2025 Modern Sonnet Judge: Donna Vorreyer
Donna Vorreyer is the author of Unrivered (forthcoming, 2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. She hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey and is a co-founder/editor of the new journal, Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters.

Awards and Sonnet Contest Reading

Prizes for both sonnet categories:

  • First prize: $50

  • Second prize: $30

  • Third prize: $20

  • Three Honorable Mentions

    Winners will be notified via email by the end of September 2025. If poets do not receive an email by then, they can assume they did not win. 

A list of all winners’ names and poem titles will be posted on our website, www.poetsandpatrons.net. All winning poets will be invited to participate in an online reading in October.

Some Thoughts on Defining a Modern Sonnet:

Rules about subject matter are looser than in more traditional sonnets, although modern sonnets should offer some sort of final point or insight in the closing lines. If you have questions, the following resources may help:

Rachel Richardson’s article, “Learning the Sonnet” on the Poetry Foundation’s website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70051/learning-the-sonnet

Litcharts article on sonnets: https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/sonnet

Annie Finch’s article, “Chaos in Fourteen Lines:” https://www.cprw.com/Misc/finch2.htm

Stephanie Burt’s article in Slate: https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/terrance-hayes-sonnet-poetry-stephanie-burt.html?fbclid=IwAR2qSqnUxsnPtIDK16skYfcEUJR9APz1fZKITwxz
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