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But the great Master said, “I see
No best in kind, but in degree;
I gave a various gift to each,
To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Singers”
First Prize:
$2,000. Publication on the Society’s website and Journal.
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Submission Fee:
$20 (The fee comes with a free subscription to our monthly e-Newsletter.)
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Submit:
One to three poems on any topic. Altogether, the poems should total 108 lines or less. First click here to pay the submission fee, then email as a Word file or in the email body to submissions@classicalpoets.org. Put “Poetry Contest Submission” in the subject line of the email. Poems must contain meter (beginners and students may simply count syllables). Rhyme and other traditional techniques are encouraged as well, but not required. (To learn how to write poetry with meter, see a brief beginner’s guide on common iambic meter here or a more elaborate beginner’s guide to many kinds of meter here. See a guide to poetry forms here.) You may alternatively mail a check made out to the Society of Classical Poets to Evan Mantyk, Society of Classical Poets. Email submissions@classicalpoets.org for mailing address.
You may pay up to $60 and send in up to three separate submissions.
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Deadline:
December 31, 2023, 11:59 p.m. EST. Winners announced February 1, 2024 on our e-Newsletter and on the Society’s homepage. (Annual submission dates Sept. 1 – Dec. 31.)
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High School Prize:
$200. See details here.
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Judges:
C.B. Anderson
Susan Jarvis Bryant
Sally Cook
Evan Mantyk
Reid McGrath
James Sale
Joseph S. Salemi
Adam Sedia
James A. Tweedie
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Read about the Competition Judges here.
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Who May Participate?
Anyone from any country of any background. If you are outside the United States, you would need to have a PayPal account to receive the prize money should you win First Place.
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Additional Details
The poem should be written in 2023. They may be previously published. Simultaneous submissions are accepted.
Past First Place winners and the Society’s executive staff are prohibited from participating.
You do not have to be a Member of the Society to participate.
You will retain ownership of your submitted poetry. By submitting it to the Society for publication or for inclusion in the contest, should it rank among winners or receive an honorable mention, you give the Society permission to publish it online on this website, in the Society of Classical Poets Journal, and in publications promoting the SCP’s mission or this annual contest, but the SCP would not be able to sell your individual poem on its own or have any further rights over it beyond these purposes. You could publish it anywhere else or sell it to any publication as desired.
You can enter up to three submissions, each containing one to three poems, not exceeding 108 lines in total per submission. Each submission requires the standard entry fee of $20.
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Past Winners
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
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Poetry Writing Resources
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- A Simple Guide to Forms and Examples from the Society of Classical Poets
- “Freeware Prosody” by Expansive Poetry Online
- How to Write Classical Poetry by the Society of Classical Poets
- “The Hard Edges of a Poem” by Joseph S. Salemi
- The Prosody Handbook: A Guide to Poetic Form by Robert Beum and Karl Shapiro
- Writing Metrical Poetry by William Baer
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Zelda
She and Scott were the face of the Jazz Age,
Drunk and riotous in post-war Paris,
He scribbling out page on potboiling page
To fund the wastage of two beaux esprits.
When the stock market crashed, in twenty-nine,
He ploughed on, as the now notorious
Gatsby scribe; she tumbled into decline,
Scorned by him who’d once been uxorious.
Institutionalized, she somehow wrote
Save Me the Waltz, whose modest yield repaid
His debts who, even now, could barely float;
She, halfway mad, hair prematurely grayed,
Died in a ferocious hospital fire,
Who’d once been Paris’s liveliest wire.
[Zelda outlived Scott by four years.]
Franz and Dora
When Kafka met Dora Dimant, at forty,
She was cooking, at a refugee camp
On the Baltic. During a sequent sortie
Into the Müritz woods, they fell, mid-tramp,
Into each other’s arms. By early fall,
Together in a small flat in Berlin,
She rejoiced at his revitalised scrawl
Till, the following spring, to their chagrin,
His T.B. turned deadly. Away they sped
To a sanatorium near Vienna
Where, on June the third, he was declared dead,
His notebooks willed to the fires of Gehenna.
Knowing their importance, she clutched them tight
Till a Gestapo raid one ill-starred night.
[Only an open-topped car could be found for the
journey, on a cold, rainy night. During much of
it, Dora stood over Franz with an umbrella.]
Marie-Thérèse
In nineteen twenty-seven, walking by
A clothing store in Paris, Pablo spotted
Marie-Thérèse Walter; promptly besotted,
He slipped an arm underneath hers with, ‘I
Am Picasso.’ Thus began a liaison
With this voluptuous flesh-and-blood houri
Whom he was driven, in a white-hot fury,
On canvas after canvas to emblazon.
Enter Dora Maar, and Marie-Thérèse
Languished in their wake, while her portrayal
Populated salons and the defrayal
Of his return lengthened to years from days,
Till, endless leagues away, she heard he’d died
And, reaved of hope, committed suicide.
[46-year-old Picasso met 17-year-old Walter
In 1927. In 1935, he transferred his attention
to Marr. He died in 1973 and, four years
later, Walter hanged herself in her garage.
A houri is a beautiful, sensuous woman.]
Judges, Hello! I have two questions.
First, the contest instructions state: “You can enter up to three submissions, each containing one to three poems, not exceeding 108 lines in total per submission.” My question is: Are poems judged individually, or as a group? Or, to put it another way, can the judges give an award to a set of two or three poems, if they are submitted as part of different groups?
For example, let’s say that someone submits three groups of poems. The first group has poems A, B & C. The second group has poems D, E & F. And the third group has poems G, H & I. And let’s say that the judges find that none of the three groups deserves an award. However, the judges also believe that poems A, D & G, if together, would deserve an award. Would the judges give an award to this group of three poems (A, D & G)? Or would they not do so, because they can’t, because the poems must be judged according to the groups in which they were submitted? The answer to this question, I think, could help people who want to submit more than one group of poems decide which of their poems to put together.
Second, the contest instructions state: “The poem should be written in 2023.” If a draft is written before 2023, and the poem is revised and finalized in 2023, does it fall within the definition of “written in 2023”?
Thanks for your help! Mark F. Stone
Dear Mark,
The judging method has changed this year. Just a single poem will win the prize, not a group.
If the final version was created in 2023 then that is fine to enter it into the competition.
-Evan Mantyk