The Downs Malvern – House Poetry Competition 2016
17 Feb 2016
This year, we welcomed Dr Bradley Wells, the new Head of English at Malvern College, to The Downs Malvern, as our adjudicator for the competition. He was enthusiastic in his praise for all of the performers, while also giving some good advice and guidance.
The competition started, as always, with the juniors, Rusheel Joshi (Y4 Cadbury) giving a confident presentation of ‘The Greedy Dog’ by James Hurley. He was followed by Beth Needham (Y4 Morgan) with W.H.Davies’ ‘Leisure’, then came Lochie Reid (Y4 Lewis) with ‘Homework, Oh Homework!’ by Jack Prelutsky and finally, a double helping of Y3 twins from Sanger – Samuel Perry and Sebastian Wilson reciting ‘Surrounded by Noise’ by Ian Souter, ably supported by George Perry and Maximus Wilson.
The Intermediate section performers were: Harriet and Madison Francis (Lewis) with ‘Friends’ by Elizabeth Jennings,; Sam Ingram (Morgan) reciting ‘The Word Party’ by Richard Edwards; Emily Eaton (Cadbury) with ‘Snail of the Moon’ by Ted Hughes and finally Matthew Vickers (Sanger) with ‘An Autumn Greeting’ by George Cooper.
The seniors completed the individual performances with first Morgan’s Antoine Sclater (Y8 ) reciting ‘Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll. Then came Finn Watkins (Y7Cadbury) with ‘Forgiven’ by A.A. Milne. Finn shared first place with Sanger’s duo Rory Upton and Leo Wallace who performed James Reeves’ ‘The Sea’, and, finally Georgina Wood (Y8 Lewis) with Percy Shelley’s sonnet ‘Ozymandias’.
The House poem section produced some breath-taking performances, Lewis House opening dramatically with Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, followed by Morgan’s outstanding performance of ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes. Cadbury came next with ‘The Snowy Owl’ by Ted Hughes and Sanger brought the choral presentations to a close with ‘A Smuggler’s Song’ by Rudyard Kipling.
The section winners were:
Junior, Beth Needham;
Intermediate, Madison and Harriet Francis;
Senior, Finn Watkins;
House, Lewis.
The final overall result was:
1st Lewis, 2nd Morgan, 3rd Cadbury and 4th Sanger.
As always, the pupils gave us a marvellous hour of poetic entertainment – a wonderful start to the half term holiday.