Date: Sat 27 Feb
Time: 2.00pm – 4.30pm
Venue: York Explore Library
Cost: Free

County finals for the 2016 Poetry by Heart contest featuring students from schools in North Yorkshire and East Riding, with Colin Jackson, producer of Yorkshire Schools Dance Festival as MC, and writer Helen Cadbury, and poet and publisher Pauline Kirk on the judging panel.

Poetry by Heart is a national competition designed to encourage pupils aged 14-18 and at school and college in England to learn and to recite poems by heart.  Not in an arm-waving, props-supported thespian extravaganza, but as the outward and audible manifestation of an inwardly-understood and enjoyed poem.

Poetry by Heart successfully engages young people from diverse social backgrounds and all types of school in personal discovery of the pleasures of poetry. Each pupil is challenged to memorise and recite two poems – one published before 1914 and one in or after 1914 or one from a special collection of World War 1 poems as part of the centenary commemorations.. Pupils choose these from the timeline anthology of over 600 years of poetry on this website. In 2015-16, for the Grand Finals, contestants will recite a third poem.

The competition is a pyramid of participation from individual classrooms to whole school/college contests, then county contests, regional semi-finals and the grand final, to be held at Homerton College, Cambridge on March 17th – 19th 2016. In the process, pupils foster deep personal connections with the poems chosen and bring poetry alive for their friends, families and communities.

This event is aimed at those aged 11+

Tickets can be booked In person at any library, or phone 01904 552828 or visit www.eventbrite.co.uk.