On Feb 4th 2014 I am one of the judges for the County final of the schools’ Poetry by Heart competition. I and my 2 fellow judges will have to listen to 5 finalists, each reading three poems, and score them accurately. It will be quite a test of listening skills!
Anyway I am posting this here as it occurs to me this is something the stanza group might like to have a crack at sometime: nothing fixes a poem in the soul like learning it by heart and it would keep our brains active!
Oh how lovely Gill – it is so helpful to learn by heart. It makes me read aloud which means I listen to the poem – and so instructive for really getting inside the craft of a poem. What are the criteria for the scoring – I’m curious – beyond remembering the words what is being judged?..
Hi Fiona, there is a website, Poetry by Heart,for this where you can see exactly what is being looked for. But mainly it’s understanding of the poem, and a clear, confident delivery with no affectation. Within that summary there are tiny things to look for ,ie, the level of difficulty of the poem and how the student copes, but that’s it in a basic nutshell!
Gill
An interesting competition to judge, Gill, especially working with two other judges.
Learning poems by heart is a great thing to do, although for me it would have to be a short poem! Just speaking another poet’s poems helps the understanding of them. And once we become comfortable with our own poems (which happens when we learn them by heart) we can put across their meaning so much better.
Aha, Robbie, I’d have to have a short poem too!! A haiku maybe? I did once try to learn Denise Levertov’s long poem “The Unknown” but the only phrases that stayed with me were “as if the white page/were a clean tablecloth” and “brimful of the afterglow”. Hmm…