Transition Year English Evening 2024

The 29th Transition Year English Evening was held on Tuesday 30th May in the Big Schoolroom. Again, it was a showcase of some of the best writing done during the year in English classes (there is no competitive element). Mr Jameson hosted the event, and the guest was former English teacher here, Mrs Annie Donnelly, who now works at Loreto Beaufort School.

Speakers (with Mrs Donnelly’s comments in square brackets) were:

• Rebekah Fitzgerald Hollywood on the nature of true friendship [this was thoughtful, with a clear sense of the person, and an excellent use of the extended metaphor].
• Delia Brady on her great-grandmother, ‘a person I would bring back from the dead’ [an engaging, fascinating historical essay, powerful as well as moving and tragic].
• Finn Woolsey on imagining his alternative self, ‘a person I would bring back from the dead’ [this was brilliantly philosophical, very controlled and original].
• Safia Walker on the proposition that young people have more problems than adults [an essay that was convincing and persuasive].
• Sophie Gibb with a story, ‘Window to the Soul’ [extremely memorable, with lots of tension and drama, and particularly effective use of sounds]
• Stella Borrowdale on her first home [a fine focus on family and belonging, with good attention to small things].
• Grant Fabian with a description of nature [poetic techniques used very well, with strong landscape description].
• Olive Mui on ‘The Oldest Person I Know’, her grandmother who went through the Chinese Famine [very engaging and original, with a lovely sardonic touch].
• Cerys Mordaunt imagining meeting up again in 8 years’ time with her friend Polly [excellent attention to detail in this imagining what the transition from adolescence to adulthood might look like].
• Grace Koch: a story called ‘Alone in the Forest’ [this captured big ideas, and used dialogue very well].

Mrs Donnelly also talked eloquently about the power of English, and how it deals with the most important things in life. She much enjoyed returning to the College, where she worked for two happy years. She also announced the winners of this year’s Premier Awards:

Stella Borrowdale, Delia Brady, Rebekah Fitzgerald Hollywood, Grace Koch, Grace McCarthy, Cerys Mordaunt, Olive Mui, Felix Strigel, Giulia Trolese and Safia Walker.

Voices of Poetry 2024

The long-standing Voices of Poetry event at the end of May provides a pause-point in the year. It is the last major event in the Big Schoolroom, and on a Sunday evening at the end of a busy weekend it gives us all a moment to listen attentively and appreciate great writing.

As always, it featured a mixture of English and other languages. It is remarkable how much one can get out of another language in terms of musicality even if the words are mysterious. Readers did give brief introductions to each of their pieces, and 23 poems were covered in 45 minutes, with Mr Girdham presenting and linking them.

Anton Demenko kicked things off in Ukrainian, followed by an utterly different language from a totally different part of the world: Bibiire Oke-Osanyintolu recited a poem in Yoruba from Nigeria.

The first English poem came from Eoin Siegel – Robert Frost’s famous ‘The Road Taken’, with its resonant final lines 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

On the thin grounds that both languages start with the letter ‘I’, but on the more substantial ones that they are both beautifully euphonious, Italian and Irish followed, with four poems intertwined and recited by Anna Luisa Sanminiatelli, Euan Flanagan, Francesco Malacarne and Molly Mann.

Shannon Walker Kinsella chose to read Cassandra Wright’s ‘Clandestine Meeting’, and she was followed by three ‘Iberian’ languages – Spanish (Pedro Olea), South American/Venezuelan Spanish (Manuela Nassief) and Portuguese (Kayra Mbanefo).

Congratulations to Nia Jessup, winner of this year’s Junior Poetry Prize for her touching poem ‘My Love’, about her grandmother, which she read out movingly.

Quite a jump then to one of the most unusual European languages, Hungarian (unconnected to any other, apart from, peculiarly, Finnish), from Gaspar Kekessy and Kasimir zu Bentheim.

And another jump to Mr Swift, who marked his interest in golf by reading out John Updike’s tribute to Payne Stewart, who came to a tragic end in 1999 at the age of 42.

Neighbouring France and Germany came next, with poems read out by Olivia Borbath and Vito Wieser, followed by two major languages from further afield, Arabic (Cecilia Corti) and Mandarin Chinese (Merida Zhang).

English rounded things up: Hal Somerville recited Byron’s dramatic ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib‘ from 1815, followed by the Warden again impressively performing one of his many learnt-poems, Rudyard Kipling’s classic ‘If’. Finally, the awarding of the Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry was marked by the Sub-Warden reading out one of Isabella Treacy’s winning poems from her portfolio. Congratulations to her on winning the prize for three years in a row.

As Mr Girdham said at the end, there is nothing better than catching up with some reading in whatever areas pupils like best. And why not some poetry?

Teaching Vacancy 2024-25

The College has a vacancy for a teacher of English for the coming academic year, to cover all ages from First Year to Leaving Certificate. Go here for further details including applications routes.