Poetry Aloud 2017

All interested in taking part in Poetry Aloud this year should let their teacher, or Mr Jameson, know as soon as possible.

Poetry Aloud is a national verse-speaking competition we've had plenty of success at in the past. Learn more about it here.

There are three categories: Junior (I and II), Intermediate (III and IV) and Senior (V and VI), with the main poems set all being by Patrick Kavanagh: "Kerr's Ass" (junior), "Inniskeen Road: July Evening" (intermediate) and "Shancoduff" (senior).

Poetry Aloud 2014

It's that time of the year again: volunteers are needed to enter the national Poetry Aloud competition, in which we've had a fair amount of success over the years. Full details are here, and also from English teachers.

The regional heats are from 13th to 24th October, and the category poems are 'Heirloom' by Gerard Smyth, 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death' by W.B. Yeats, and the late Seamus Heaney's wonderful 'St Kevin and the Blackbird' (see and listen to him reading it above). Then you add a poem from one of the prescribed anthologies - The Rattle Bag, Lifelines and Something Beginning with P.

Poem of the Week

Today we resume the Poem of the Week scheme: we post the poem around the College, and read it in English classes. Poem of the Week number 71 is one recited from memory by Mr Swift in his talk this morning in Chapel encouraging pupils to enter the Poetry Aloud 2012 competition. He said he first came across 'Sea of Faith' by John Brehm (above) during his teacher training course.

Mr Swift also recited W.B. Yeats's 'The Fish' and (very briefly of course, to finish off with), Ogden Nash's 'The Fly':-

The Fish

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords,
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.

The Fly

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.

Pupils can get full details of Poetry Aloud from their teacher, or here.

Poetry Aloud performers

Mr Jameson has now completed the auditions for the 2010 Poetry Aloud competition, and has posted the list in school. There are 3 senior, 3 intermediate and 8 juniors listed. More once the competition gets underway next month.

Poetry Aloud auditions

Mr Jameson will hold auditions for this year's national Poetry Aloud competition at 1.30pm on Tuesday in the BSR. All welcome - copies of the poems are available from him or your English teacher.

Poetry Aloud 2010

We've had plenty of success and a very positive experience from the Poetry Aloud competition organised jointly by Poetry Ireland and the National Library of Ireland in recent years, and the process of selecting our representatives has just started again. You need to learn one poem by W.B. Yeats (Junior- 'The Stolen Child'; Intermediate - 'Beautiful Lofty Things'; Senior - the marvellous late poem 'Cuchulain Comforted', which is reproduced below). Also a poem of your own choice from The Rattle Bag or Lifelines. See your English teachers for full details, and to register your interest.

We will shortly have internal auditions, and will select the best to go forward to local heats. Full details are on the National Library site here. There's an excellent site with plenty of resources for pupils and teachers from the other side of the Atlantic in Poetry Out Loud.

'Cuchulain Comforted', by W.B. Yeats

A man that had six mortal wounds, a man
Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head
Came and were gone. He leant upon a tree
As though to meditate on wounds and blood.

A Shroud that seemed to have authority
Among those bird-like things came, and let fall
A bundle of linen. Shrouds by two and three

Came creeping up because the man was still.
And thereupon that linen-carrier said:
'Your life can grow much sweeter if you will

'Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud;
Mainly because of what we only know
The rattle of those arms makes us afraid.

'We thread the needles' eyes, and all we do
All must together do.' That done, the man
Took up the nearest and began to sew.

'Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told our character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain

'Or driven from home and left to die in fear.'
They sang, but had nor human tunes nor words,
Though all was done in common as before;

They had changed their throats and had the throats of birds.

Poetry Aloud Finals Day

Good luck this morning to Hamish Law and John Clarke, our two semi-finalists in this year's Poetry Aloud competition, which comes to a climax today at Wesley College. The final will be held in Wesley this evening in front of President Mary McAleese.

Poetry Aloud 2009

Congratulations to Hamish Law (intermediate) and John Clarke (junior), who yesterday won their sections at the National Library heat of the Poetry Aloud competition, and thus qualify for the national semi-final in Wesley College on December 4th. The final is later that same day.

Poetry Aloud, and Library Quiz

Good luck to our teams in two events this afternoon - the first round of the Poetry Aloud competition, 2009 (in the National Library), and the Library Quiz at Alexandra College. Mr Jameson and Mr McConville are in charge of the respective teams.

(Yes, that is indeed Father Dougal).

Poetry Aloud 2009

The Poetry Aloud competition for this year has just been launched, and over the next two weeks we'll be holding our own internal auditions and competitions to select candidates to go forward to the first heat.

The set poems by Yeats are 'Who Goes with Fergus?' (junior), 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death' (intermediate) and 'What Then?' (senior), and the second poem is to be chosen from The Rattle Bag or Lifelines. Pupils can borrow a copy of The Rattle Bag from their teachers. Full details here.

Voices of Poetry 2009

Last night, after a glorious summer's day, we gathered in the BSR for our annual Voices of Poetry evening, and listened as 24 pupils and staff read poetry in various languages in the darkened hall, lit by a single spotlight. It's always a special evening in the College's calendar. Some of the poetry has already appeared on this blog this year (click the links).

Matt Brooke from I form opened with 'My Dad's Old Boots', an appropriate start for an evening that involved journeys of many kinds - geographical, linguistic, poetic, emotional...

The first foreign language heard was Russian, in the form of a poem to women by Pushkin read by Olga Kolobkova, and others were Dutch (Lavinia Thelen), Farsi (Milo Reddaway), Latin (Patrick Faulkner), Italian (Sophie Kyd-Rebenburg), Spanish (Gina Mirow), French (Philip Arndt), Gujerati (Rishi Manuel), and German (Helene Tonner). Our national language was represented by Oscar Nunan from Donegal reading a poem by Cathal O Searcaigh.

Interspersed with these languages was poetry in English, much of it by pupils. Olivia Plunket read 'A cold wind', which came out of the Christmas Past project last December; two poems from the TY Images in Art module were Thomas Emmet's 'The Old Guitarist' and Robbie Hollis's 'The Scream'; Opeline Kellett, one of the three successful Poetry Aloud finalists this year, read her Junior Poetry Prize-winning 'Youthful Innocence'; Patrick McGonagle read 'Messy Room' by the American children's author Shel Silverstein (see his fine site here); William Maire, another Poetry Aloud finalist, read Yeats's 'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death'; the Senior Prefect, Rebecca Feeney-Barry, chose Wilfred Owen's 'Has Your Soul Slipped?'; Fiona Boyd, winner of this year's Dix Poetry Prize, read one of her winning pieces, a memorable mirror poem called 'Christmas Reflexive'; and the evening concluded with Molly Buckingham reading 'Dawn' by the youngest poet of the night, Mark Russell from Primary.

There were also readings from staff members - the Warden marked Seamus Heaney's recent 70th birthday with 'Twice Shy' and his powerful sestina 'Two Lorries' (listen to Heaney reading it here on the Poetry Archive); Dr Riemenschneider, shortly on her way to America after two years here, read Robert Frost's 'The Road not Taken'; Mr McCarthy read a powerful personal poem about love by his brother Ted (from his 1999 book November Wedding); and the Chaplain, shortly to retire, delivered Peter Dix's poem 'We all walk on walls', which is inscribed on the front of the Dix Memorial Award (pictured).

It was a superb evening, full of juxtapositions and surprises, eddying through seriousness and humour, and expertly brought together by organiser and presenter Mr Swift.

Poetry Round-up

A reminder to all pupils that entries for this year's Peter Dix Memorial Senior Prize for Poetry (left) and Junior Poetry Prize, are due by the last day of term. See noticeboards for details.

The poet Louise C. Callaghan has been working with our Primary class over the last couple of days. Congratulations to Louise on being shortlisted for the Strokestown Poetry Prize (English language section). The Strokestown International Festival takes place from May 1st to May 3rd. Next term one of our podcasts will be an interview with Louise about her own poetry, and the ways she runs her workshops.

Seamus Heaney has just been awarded the David Cohen Award for Literature; part of the award is the chance to nominate the winner of the Clarissa Luard Award, which is for a literature organisation which encourages young people. Our Nobel Laureate has chosen Poetry Aloud, which our pupils have taken part in for several years - a fine and typically thoughtful choice. He talked about his choice on BBC Radio 4's 'Front Row' this week (you can listen again on the site, and via their podcast), and said that learning poetry and speaking it through Poetry Aloud provided an 'inner grace' for its participants.

Poetry Aloud final

Well done to Opeline Kellett and William Maire, who both reached the national final of the Poetry Aloud competition at the National Library of Ireland on Friday (thus SCC had 10% of the national finalists!), and to Molly Buckingham, who did very well in the semi-final. We hope to build on this success by continuing to push learning and reciting poetry in junior forms in particular.

Poetry Aloud finals

Good luck to Opeline Kellett (III), William Maire (II) and Molly Buckingham (I) who this morning take part in the semi-finals and (this afternoon, we hope) the final of the Poetry Ireland / National Library Poetry Aloud competition - details here.

Poetry Aloud success

Congratulations to our three entrants, Opeline Kellett, William Maire and Molly Buckingham, who were three of the five contestants selected out of 60 participants yesterday to qualify for the Poetry Aloud semi-finals, from their regional heat. Opeline and William previously read their poems in Chapel.

'Tour', by Carol Snow

The 36th Poem of the Week is our shortest so far : Carol Snow's 'Tour', which can be seen here on Billy Collins's Library of Congress Poetry 180 site ('a poem a day for American high schools').

This morning our 15 entrants for the Poetry Aloud competition are at the National Library in Kildare Street reciting their poems. The poetry of Thomas Kinsella features prominently, in celebration of his 80th birthday this year.

The Windhover

The 35th Poem of the Week is Gerard Manley Hopkins's 'The Windhover' :-

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird -- the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous. O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

In Chapel this morning Mr Girdham read this poem and 'Hurrahing in Harvest' during a talk on the importance of sound in poetry. As part of this, two of our entrants for the Poetry Aloud competition at the National Library performed poems by Thomas Kinsella - William Maire recited 'A Garden on the Point', and Opeline Kellett 'Tara'.

Gathering Leaves, by Robert Frost

Our 34th Poem of the Week is Gathering Leaves (here) by Robert Frost. Above, one of our Wordles, based on this poem. Today is All Ireland Poetry Day - see events on the Poetry Ireland website here.

Mr Jameson is holding a preliminary meeting today at 1.30 in Kennedy for anyone interested in contributing to a proposed new school magazine, provisionally called 'Second Bell.'

Our entrants for the Poetry Aloud competition have been decided. More on this after the Exodus, which starts tomorrow, school resuming on Tuesday morning.

Competitions

There are lots of competitions around at the start of the school year, and pupils may like to get involved in one or more of these, such as :-

• the annual Poetry Aloud competition organised by Poetry Ireland and the National Library. Over the next week, we'll be asking pupils to take part in our preliminary round, and then entering the winners for the competition itself.
• the new Spooky Story competition organised by Children's Books Ireland based on Tomm Moore's artwork (above).
• the new Young Emerging Writer's and Artists' Forum, which is publishing an arts journal later this year.

(click on the links for further details: your English teachers will be encouraging you in class ...)

Poetry Aloud finals

Good luck to Rosy Temple, Jessica Dean and Anna Traill, who today take part in the semi-finals of the Poetry Aloud recital competition in the National Library in Dublin.

From the website :
"Following the first round of the POETRY ALOUD Poetry Speaking Competition, which was held regionally in March, the semi-final and final of the competition will take place in the National Library in Dublin on 11 May 2007. 112 students from 19 counties across Ireland and Northern Ireland have been chosen to represent their schools in the semi-finals. The first semi-final will take place at 9.30am and the second at 1.30pm. 30 students will compete in the final of this year’s competition, which will take place at 6pm. The judges for the final are Professor Brendan Kennelly poet and teacher; Thomas McCarthy, poet, critic and Board member of Poetry Ireland, and Dr Pat Donlon, former Director of the National Library of Ireland and now Director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan."