Eliza Roxey Snow Memorial Prize Poems

This article is for the compilation of all the prize poems for the Eliza Roxey Snow Memorial Prize Poem Contest. The contest began in 1923, although no poems were published until 1924. Those of these poems published from 1924–1942 were included in Our Legacy: Relief Society Centennial Anthology of Verse, 1941. Here is a quote from the beginning of that book:

Part I brings together for the first time all the prize poems named in the Eliza Roxey Snow Memorial Poem Contest during the nineteen annual contests conducted since establishment of this memorial. This contest was inaugurated by the Relief Society in 1923 as a memorial to its former general president, the poet, Eliza R. Snow, and as a means of fostering poetic expression among the women of the Church. The gifted and highly intellectual Eliza R. Snow, who was a charter member and first secretary of Relief Society, and general president from 1866 to 1887, distinguished herself as an organizer and leader of women during the period when local Relief Societies were being established in the pioneer Mormon communities of the West. The prize-winning poems selected in each annual contest are published the following year in The Relief Society Magazine, and are therefore designated chronologically according to year of publication, rather than by year of the contest. In recognition of the Relief Society centennial in 1942, the 1941 contest was limited to poems with a Relief Society centennial theme.

Here is a quote regarding the contest from the July Ensign of 1977, from the article “Virtuous, Lovely, or of Good Report”: How the Church Has Fostered the Arts, By Ronald W. Walker and D. Michael Quinn:

In 1923 the Relief Society began its Eliza Roxey Snow Memorial Prize Poem Contest to promote Latter-day Saint writing, and followed it in 1942 with an annual prize for the best short story. The Relief Society’s annual Eliza R. Snow poetry contest for women is now published in the Ensign. The New Era offers magazine subscriptions, cash, and scholarships for excellence in writing, art, photography, and music composition by teenagers and young adults, while the Ensign gives adults cash prizes for articles, short stories, and poetry in its own annual contest.