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Last week, I was a judge in the regional Staffordshire/Shropshire heat of the first ever National Poetry by Heart competition. ‘Oh yes, I’ll do that,’ I’d airily said, imagining how nice it would be to sit listening to young people bringing poems to life. The night before the competition, however, I lay awake worrying. All those young people with their hopes of making it through to the final at the National Portrait Gallery - I imagined them practicing hard, giving it their best, trying to remember their selected poems and deliver them in a way that proved they understood them. And all to be marked on score cards by judges which included me.
What if I got it wrong? Never mind the other judges - what if the best boy/girl didn’t win and I was the one to blame? Would I be the one the audience would end up shaking its collective head at when so-and-so’s shining talent was overlooked? I mugged up on all the poems to prepare myself. Some of my favourites on the judging list hadn’t been chosen to my disappointment, but that’s the way things go. There were some brilliant choices too.
I read the poems out loud to get a feel for how easy or difficult they might be, both to understand and to perform. Then I waded my way through the judging criteria [as complicated as a national curriculum in miniature – were we really meant to take all this into account in the short time that a poem was being read?]. I practiced judging using performances on line. Finally I was about as prepared as I could be - yet still I had that niggling doubt. I feared my judgment would let someone’s talent fail to shine.
But then I don’t like judgments. Never have done. God help the general public if I’d ever been a magistrate. I shudder to imagine the petty criminals who’d have walked free to re- offend.
So why had I agreed to do this, you might well ask? Certainly it wasn’t born of a desire to select the best at the expense of the rest. No, it was for the poetry that I said ‘yes’. ‘Best news of the week after the renaissance of Ziggy Stardust,’ is how John Walsh, in the Independent, described the Poetry by Heart competition back in January when it was announced. ‘School champions will declaim Keats or Browning at oikish rivals from other schools. There’ll be heats and a nail-biting final in April. It’s very Michael Gove – and I’m all for it.’
Good for you, John Walsh. I’m ignoring your mention of John Gove [and Keats and Browning, since so many modern poets are included too] but when you say that poetry learned by heart is like a private iPoems library available for download, I’m with you. And I’m with Andrew Motion when he talks about poetry moving us before we understand it, because it operates as ‘emotional noise’. ‘Its sounds allow us to receive it in our hearts, as well as in our heads,’ Andrew Motion says.
And that was what happened on the night. Without delving into the secrets of the judges’ deliberations, I can tell you that though the choice was tight the best girl won and, as far as I was concerned, she did it with her second poem, Edwin Morgan’s ‘Strawberries’, which she absolutely made her own. Before the competition, I’d identified this poem as one of those that interested me least, but Shropshire/Staffordshire finalist, Concorde College's Alexandra Tham, unwrapped what it was saying and made it shine.
6 Comments on Poetry By Heart: Pauline Fisk on a judge's perspective, last added: 4/6/2013
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This is fascinating. I came second in a Poetry Reciting Competition as a child - and was told it was because the girl who won stood up straighter than I did. I recall a feeling of great injustice as no one had suggested this was one of the criteria! So it's reassuring to know that someone is judging one of these competitions on the ability to bring a poem to life.
This sounds a wonderful thing to have done, Pauline! I too remember entering verse speaking competitions as a child - my claim to fame is single-handedly wrenching the Skipton Music Festival's sonnet-recitation class away from nothing but Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by winning one year with a Charles Causley sonnet! No one ever taught me how, I just did it, because I too loved Causley. So glad you do too!
I loved doing it and I really meant it when I said the way the winner recited 'Strawberries' will stay with me. She made the poem her own. And there were so many other good poems on the list. Go to the Poetry by Heart anthology and take a look at them all.
I'd heard a mention of this competition - and do feel that learning and speaking poetry can be a way for words to get into your heart, and more. Thanks for this persepective, Pauline.
I was a judge at a BBC radio version of such a competition - maybe seven years back - and found the balance between "performance and presentation skills" and the child's (at least apparently) natural relationship with the poem became very much part of the judging process.
Off to search for the PbH Anthology.
There was what appeared to be an effortless relationship between the winning performance and the poem she chose. I seem to remember when I learnt stuff by heart as a child [and I learnt a lot] that it was all to do with the feat of remembering. I can't remember it being a vehicle for digging deep into the meaning of a poem, and into my own heart. This was one of the reasons why I found this judging experience so interesting.