MTS Boys Honoured in National Poetry Recital Competition

This year we had three Third Form boys enter the prestigious Poetry by Heart Competition. This is a national competition, which encourages pupils across the country to engage with the literary canon and to choose two poems - one pre-1900 and one post-1900 - to commit to memory and recite to an audience. 

Selected from our own competitive pool of entries, we had Tanush G, Hari S and Yishen L representing the school. They recorded themselves reciting their two chosen poems, before submitting their poems for adjudication. Performances are judged on how well pupils communicate the meaning and feeling of their poems, their ear for prosody and their appreciation for the subtleties of poetry. 

Both Tanush and Hari were commended for their efforts. It was Yishen, however, who went on to be awarded the prize for 'Best in County', his recitals of Edith Sitwell's The Dancers (1916) and Edgar Allen Poe's The Bells (1849) selected as the best across all of West London. All three are to be congratulated on their achievements and for keeping the torch of poetry burning bright. 

Mr M. G. Hilton-Dennis

The Dancers by Edith Sitwell

(1916)

(During a Great Battle, 1916)

The floors are slippery with blood:

The world gyrates too. God is good

That while His wind blows out the light

For those who hourly die for us –

We still can dance, each night.

The music has grown numb with death –

But we will suck their dying breath,

The whispered name they breathed to chance,

To swell our music, make it loud

That we may dance, – may dance.

We are the dull blind carrion-fly

That dance and batten. Though God die

Mad from the horror of the light –

The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, –

We dance, we dance, each night.

The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe

(1849)

 Hear the sledges with the bells—

                 Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

           In the icy air of night!

        While the stars that oversprinkle

        All the heavens, seem to twinkle

           With a crystalline delight;

         Keeping time, time, time,

         In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinabulation that so musically wells

       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

               Bells, bells, bells—

  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.