A number of poetry enthusiasts participated in Poetry by Heart, the national recitation competition in which each entrant must memorise and then deliver two poems. There was strong competition within school at both KS3 and KS4, with boys from the Removes through to the Fifths reciting a huge variety of poetry before the judging panel of Divisions and Sixths. After considerable deliberation, Aaryan Manarkattu was declared the winner at KS3 and Rohan Tandon at KS4.
The second stage of the contest was to record Aaryan and Rohan’s recitations and send them to Poetry by Heart, and at this point lockdown came into play and we heard nothing more… until a late-breaking email from the organisers with the welcome information that Rohan had been declared the KS4 county winner for Birmingham! The judges commended his “clear diction and dramatically charged performance” of Swift’s A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General and noted that “Rohan uses a good varied pace and clear exposition” in his rendition of Masefield’s short and melancholy Partridges.
