Revised guidance for Covid19 conditions

We think that choosing, learning and sharing poems out loud is an especially valuable activity in the current conditions of the pandemic. Much of it can be done offline without online access. A poem learnt often stays for life, growing with the person who learnt it and deepening its meaning over time.

We have now streamlined the rules to make it easier to participate in the national competition and showcase this year. School closures, learning at home and social distancing have made Poetry By Heart’s live in-school competitions difficult to manage and everybody is under additional  strain – teachers, young people and their families.

We are now inviting schools to enter the national competition and performance showcase in adapted ways, for example by using digital platforms such as Zoom, Teams or Skype, or videos of poem performances made at home by young people with their families. Find out more here.

We are on hand to provide additional guidance and support, and we have already designed some fun visual backgrounds that can be used in Skype, Teams or Zoom.

We have already had competition entry video uploads from schools and colleges which held in-person competitions in the usual way before the lockdown. You are of course welcome to do the same once young people return to schools and colleges, if that happens before 31st March 2021. Because we don’t know when this will happen we’re offering additional digital competition options.

We have made other changes to relax the demands and streamline the work of joining in. We have extended all the upload deadlines from the end of February to the end of March. We’ve reduced the minimum competition numbers –  you can now enter your Key stage winner even if there was only one contestant in that category.

We want to encourage young people, their families and their teachers to join in and have fun with poetry. Please contact us if you have any questions or other suggestions about creative methods for working with the constraints we are all under: info@poetrybyheart.org.uk or 0117 905 5338.

January 28th 2021

Joining The National Competition

Outline of the three types of national entry in 2021

There are three main types of national entry available this year, all possible by video performances made by young people at home.

The Classic Competition in which an individual recites two poems which have been chosen from the Poetry By Heart website, one poem published before 1914 and one published in or after 1914.

The Celebration Competition in which an individual, a small group (2-5 young people) or a large group (6+ young people) perform any one poem chosen from the website. There is an additional option for school staff and PGCE students to enter.

The new Freestyle Showcase option in which an individual, a small group or a large group perform any poem at all, including those written by the contestant/s.

Click on the links to see the rules for each type of entry.

How Poetry By Heart will judge and respond to your entries

The Poetry By Heart team will watch and respond to all entries received by 31st March 2021. We will send personalised feedback and certificates to the teachers of every young person who is entered.

Our expert panel of poet judges and educators will then judge the best performances in the Classic and Celebration Competition categories. We’ll invite those competitors and their chaperones to attend the national event at Shakespeare’s Globe on the SouthBank in London (date tbc), at which the national winners will be announced. We will also invite some of the very best Freestyle Showcase performers. It’s all free to invited participants, including travel costs.

With appropriate parental permissions in place, we will also add a selection of video performances to Poetry By Heart’s website.

Uploading your competition entry

Entering the national competition – a simple video upload

To enter the national competition, a teacher or librarian in the school or college makes a separate video of each poem their winner(s) performed – if you have one key stage 3 Classic entrant, that’s two videos, one for each poem. In 2021 you will often be working with poem performance videos made by the students at home. All we want is a simple point-and-shoot video – no cuts, edits, music, subtitles or special effects.

Students can rehearse as much as they like and they can do as many takes as you allow until they’re happy with their entry. Then you’ll fill in a straightforward online entry form for each key stage winner,  and you will use our new drag-and-drop video uploader to attach your video files. We’ll keep them safe and secure for judging, with all due regard to safeguarding.

We expect students to recite their poem not to merely read it aloud. We advise you to ask students to say this at the start of their video: “I am reciting by heart <Poem Title> by <Poet Name>”. Usually reading a poem generates different eye movement to that elicited by reciting it from memory and our judges will be looking at that. It helps if students get someone else to record their performance so they can stand up and away from a screen. Devices such as phones and tablets need to be held horizontally when filming, not vertically.

Our video guide is here.

Our upload guide is here.

Classic Competition - 2 poems

Rules and recommendations for the CLASSIC two poem competition

The CLASSIC competition is open to individuals in key stages 2 ,3, 4 and 5. A school or college can enter a winner for each key stage.

Contestants choose, learn and perform 2 poems from the Poetry By Heart website, one published before 1914 and one published in or after 1914.

The poems should be those chosen by the contestant although teachers and librarians may offer recommendations. Contestants may choose poems from any timeline – or any of the showcase collections – on the Poetry By Heart website. All these selections have been curated with specific age groups in mind so this may help to guide choices. Students may mix two poems from separate timelines or showcases, as long as there is one poem from each of the pre-1914 and post-1914 categories.

We only remind students, teachers, librarians and parents that reciting more advanced poems won’t offer any competitive advantage: an eight-year old struggling with Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ won’t get extra credit for her poem choice. A 17 year old A Level student would have to work quite hard to convince a judge that their choice of Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ – or a very simple six line children’s poem – was a wise choice for the key stage 5 national competition. But never say never – and what is most important is that the poem is right for the child or young person, and that they chose it.

For key stage 2 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 7+

For key stage 3 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 11+

For key stage 4 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 14+

For key stage 5 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A poem 16+

Celebration Competition - 1 poem

Rules and recommendations for the CELEBRATION one poem competition

The CELEBRATION competition is designed to celebrate and share many different ways of enjoying poetry aloud. A Celebration entry is less formal in its requirements than the Classic competition and it offers a more diverse channel for contestants to interpret and express their poems, individually or collaboratively. Maximum participation is the main goal. The requirement is one poem from anywhere on the Poetry By Heart website. Celebration contestants would usually share their poems aloud in front of others; this year that will often be done digitally.

There are three Celebration categories for young people:

individual;

small group (2-5 students);

large group (6+ students).

Schools and colleges may put forward one entry per category for the national competition – so if you have lots of entries you do have to choose but you have three categories for that choice! There is flexibility about how you choose your entrants.

Staff Celebration category

As before we are offering a competition option for teachers and librarians, and other members of school or college staff. The same rules apply  – individual staff members or groups recite 1 poem from the Poetry By Heart website. Any member of school staff can take part, and so too can PGCE tutors and trainees. We have an additional special prize for PGCE trainees this year.

The poems should be those chosen by the contestants although teachers and librarians may offer recommendations. Contestants may choose poems from any timeline – or any of the showcase collections – on the Poetry By Heart website. All these selections have been curated with specific age groups in mind so this may help to guide choices.

We only remind students, teachers, librarians and parents that reciting more advanced poems won’t offer any competitive advantage: an eight-year old struggling with Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ won’t get extra credit for her poem choice. A 17 year old A Level student would have to work quite hard to convince a judge that their choice of Edward Lear’s ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ – or a very simple six line children’s poem – was a wise choice for the key stage 5 national competition. But never say never – and what is most important is that the poem is right for the child or young person, and that they chose it.

For key stage 2 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 7+

For key stage 3 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 11+

For key stage 4 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A Poem 14+

For key stage 5 pupils, the recommended choices are set out for them in the Learning Zone (all free, no login needed) in Choose A poem 16+

Freestyle Poetry Showcase - 1 poem

Rules and recommendations for the Freestyle Poetry Showcase

The new Freestyle Poetry Showcase is an additional option we are offering this year for young people in any key stage. It is a response to people’s request for wider options, including young people reciting their own poem or a poem that is not on the Poetry By Heart website, or a poem in their home languages or other languages they are learning, or they want to make a poem performance animation – then you can still join in our celebration of poetry out loud and by heart with a Freestyle Poetry Showcase upload. Each school or college can submit up to 9 video performances – any poem, any style, any age, any number of participants. We’ll invite a selection of the very best to our national event at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. We’ll feature as many as we can in the Performance Gallery on the Poetry By Heart website during the summer term.

Schools and colleges can can submit up to 9 Freestyle Poetry Showcase videos.