The Architecture of Order: 2021’s Best Classical Verse

The year 2021 felt less like a new chapter and more like a held breath. In the silence following the global upheavals of the previous year, the Society of Classical Poets (SCP) released its selection for the 10th Annual International Poetry Competition. These weren’t just poems; they were attempts to rebuild the world using the sturdy bricks of meter and rhyme.

Apollo and King Midas by Simon Floquet

While free verse often mirrors the fragmentation of modern thought, the winners of this collection did the opposite. They imposed a rigorous geometry on human experience. Judges Joseph S. Salemi, James Sale, and Evan Mantyk sifted through entries that sought not to break tradition, but to inhabit it fully.

The Weight of History

James A. Tweedie of Washington State claimed the First Place ($2,000) distinction. His work doesn’t just look at the past; it stares at it until the past blinks. In “Contemplating Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer,” Tweedie engages in a meta-commentary that spans centuries. You have the poet looking at the philosopher looking at the bard.

It is a hall of mirrors constructed out of iambs. His companion piece, “Honest to God,” strips away the academic veneer for something rawer, proving that classical form is not a dusty museum exhibit but a functioning vessel for contemporary doubt and faith.

Domesticity and Myth

The Second Place winners pivoted sharply between the intimate and the epic. Sally Cook’s “House Sale” touches on the peculiar grief of dismantling a home. It isn’t about the real estate; it’s about the way a life gets packed into boxes, the dust settling in empty corners where furniture used to stand.

In contrast, Cheryl Corey reached back to the loom of the ancients with “The Three Fates.” Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are not easy guests to invite into a modern poem. They bring a deterministic dread that is hard to shake. Corey manages to make their threads feel taut, ready to snap. Andrew Benson Brown rounded out this tier with “Glastonbury,” rooting the collection in the mystic soil of English legend.

A Global Chorus

The list of Third Place and Honorable Mentions reveals the geographic sprawl of this revival. We see Lionel Willis from Canada bringing “Bach in Heidelberg,” a fusion of musical and poetic discipline. From Australia, David Watt contributed “The Magpie’s Chorus,” reminding us that nature maintains its own rhythm regardless of human affairs.

Brian Yapko’s “The Secret Garden” and “From a Classified Location in England” demonstrate the versatility of the formalist poets. One moment you are in a children’s literary sanctuary; the next, you are dealing with the stark realities of veteran experience.

The collection serves as a reminder. When the world becomes noisy, the structured line—the sonnet, the couplet, the quatrain—offers a specific kind of quiet. It is the quiet of a stone placed perfectly in an arch. It holds.