Forester McClatchey ’16 won the third annual First Things Poetry Prize for his poem “Lethe.”

McClatchey studied English and art, and contributed to The Collegian. He then received his master’s in poetry at the University of Florida, and has taught at Atlanta Classical Academy for the last 6 years. 

As a student, teacher, and poet, McClatchey has pursued the use of words and the western tradition in a way that he says honors the audience by “framing language in a way that is communal.” His work provides a model for students of creative writing at Hillsdale as they seek to carry the western tradition to the modern world through their work.

First Things is a monthly magazine that covers religion and public life. It publishes essays and book reviews as well as poems. Within its poetry contest, the magazine emphasizes a special focus on the form and musicality of a poem and seeks to recognize works of outstanding merit and meter.

“In honoring and platforming poets, First Things manifests its claim that it is committed to beauty, and to conservative things, including poetic form,” said First Things Junior Fellow and former Editor-in-Chief of The Collegian, Jillian Parks ’25. “For that reason, First Things is countercultural. Rather than going with the flow of progressive updates and upheavals, First Things, like Hillsdale, says things ought to be properly contemplated and considered before being changed or abandoned.”

McClatchey said he draws deeply on his experience living, growing up, and teaching in Atlanta to inspire the content of many of his poems, and “Lethe” is no exception. Drawing from his frequent visits to the humid orchid house of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the poem explores the tricky nature of memory through the fake nectar sacks of an orchid that allow it to trick bugs into carrying its pollen. 

McClatchey said receiving the award made him more aware of the world’s poetic community. 

“Writing poetry is so solitary,” McClatchey said. “I think that it is necessary to forget any possibility of praise or criticism while you’re writing because if you write to avoid criticism or write to earn people’s praise, you’re never going to say anything remotely interesting.” 

McClatchey expressed an anxiety common among poets and authors.  The solitary process of writing and revision makes sharing the product feel a bit like putting something very personal on display, but he views poetry as something that must at some point make a turn toward the audience.

“There is this strange way in which recognition feels irrelevant to the fundamental job,” McClatchey said. “But of course it is very nice and humbling to think about the various readers of First Things coming across the poem. It always feels a bit strange and a little surprising to receive praise or criticism.”

Associate Professor of English Dutton Kearney said McClatchey has the deepest sense of curiosity of any student he has taught. Kearney said he is unsurprised with his success. 

McClatchey said Kearney’s class on contemporary Christian poetry and creative writing inspired his senior thesis on the Victorian understanding of dinosaurs. McClatchey’s curious approach allowed him to dive deeply into the great books that Hillsdale focuses on.

“I was lucky to receive the English education I got at Hillsdale because it was an immersion in great texts,” McClatchey said.  “The narrative about what it means to be immersed in great texts is almost infinitely less valuable than being immersed in them. The really good stuff was actually being in the books and being gifted new minds like the mind of Dante, the mind of T.S. Eliot, the mind of George Eliot. That’s irreplaceable.”

McClatchey’s poems often approach history and myth through new perspectives, from that of Isaac in the Bible to the elephants of Hannibal’s army, and present an opportunity for the reader to live in a moment of the past and see history as someone moving through it. 

T.S. Eliot and Anne Carson are two poets who strongly influence his approach to myth and inspire his posture of revival when engaging with the tradition, according to McClatchey.

He said he approaches the Western tradition with reverence but also with a goal of actively engaging with it and moving through it with curiosity.

“You want to honor and respect it and engage with it, but if you grovel before it, there will be something obnoxious and dishonorable about the poetry,” McClatchey said. “And so bringing something fresh and even slightly pugnacious to tradition, even as you honor it, I think is necessary to engage with it in an interesting way.”

McClatchey said his approach to history comes from a desire to make it real and accessible by engaging with the senses. It is because he writes of history that he writes for living people. His poetry is often concerned with death, but his style and posture is toward the living reader who engages with the everyday through their senses.

“When I’m writing, I have a goal to make history accessible to the reader’s senses,” McClatchey said. “So often, history is used for cheap moral instruction, or treated as a series of sterile facts, and I want to explore the ways in which history was unbearably real and confusing to the people living in it.”