National Poetry Day falls on Thursday 1st October, and we are marking it this year in the way we think suits poetry best — out loud. Every girl in Forms III to VI will be taking part in a whole-school poetry competition, choosing a poem, learning it by heart, and performing it to her class.
How our poetry competition works
The competition runs in two rounds:
- Each girl in Forms III to VI chooses a poem and memorises it, performing to her class on Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th September
- From those performances, three pupils per class go through to the final (Forms III and IV are combined at this stage)
- The final takes place on Wednesday 7th October in assembly, in front of the whole school community
The finalists will be judged by Mr Sayers and Mrs Couch, who have the enjoyable job of choosing two overall winners. We are very much looking forward to seeing the creativity, expression and confidence on show.
Why learning a poem by heart still matters
Memorising a poem can look old-fashioned. It is anything but. A poem a child knows by heart belongs to her in a way that a poem she has only read does not — it comes back to her years later, on a walk or in a difficult moment, and it has done quiet work in the meantime.
There is a practical case too. Learning verse builds vocabulary and an ear for rhythm, and it trains the memory in a way that transfers to everything from spelling patterns to times tables. Girls who can hold a poem in their head find it easier to hold an argument in their head.
Performing is a skill, and it can be taught
Standing up in front of your class and speaking from memory is a genuinely brave thing to do at eight or nine. It is also entirely learnable, and it is one of the reasons performance runs right through life at our school — class concerts, House Music, LAMDA lessons in acting and verse and prose, and assemblies where every girl takes her turn.
The girls who will look composed in front of the school on 7th October are not the ones who were born confident. They are the ones who have had plenty of low-stakes practice. That is exactly what a competition like this provides: a class audience first, then a bigger one, with a poem they have chosen themselves.
Exploring poetry at home
If your daughter is choosing her poem this week, or you simply want to keep the momentum going after 1st October, a few suggestions:
- Read poems aloud rather than silently — poetry is written for the ear
- Let her choose something she finds funny; Michael Rosen, Roger McGough and Joseph Coelho all reward reading out loud
- Try older poems too — Edward Lear and Christina Rossetti still land with primary-age children
- Learn one together, a couple of lines at a time, and test each other in the car
- Talk about what the poem makes her picture, rather than what it “means”
A school where every girl is heard
Events like this are a good window into how a school works day to day. If you are looking at girls’ independent schools in Hertfordshire and would like to see it for yourself, our Open Morning is on Saturday 3rd October, 10am–12pm, and personal tours run throughout the term.
