Category: Amazing resources

 

 

From the original webiste:

Poetry By Heart is a UK national competition designed to encourage pupils aged 14-18 and at school and college in England to learn and to recite poems by heart. Not in an arm-waving, props-supported thespian extravaganza, but as the outward and audible manifestation of an inwardly-understood and enjoyed poem.

Poetry By Heart successfully engages young people from diverse social backgrounds and all types of school in personal discovery of the pleasures of poetry. Each pupil is challenged to memorise and recite two poems – one published before 1914 and one in or after 1914 or one from a special collection of World War 1 poems as part of the centenary commemorations.. Pupils choose these from the timeline anthology of over 600 years of poetry on this website. In 2015-16, for the Grand Finals, contestants will recite a third poem.

The competition is a pyramid of participation from individual classrooms to whole school/college contests, then county contests, regional semi-finals and the grand final, to be held at Homerton College, Cambridge on March 17th – 19th 2016. In the process, pupils foster deep personal connections with the poems chosen and bring poetry alive for their friends, families and communities.

 

My insight:

What I found truly amazing here is the collection of poems than can be read, heard, read out aloud or copied, ranging from 1000 to Andre Motion’s 2014 stuff. The section Poetry for children is a wonderful resource (I want to be a child here, not a grown up any more), top quality design and truly engaging. The timeline is really inspiring.