Poetry by Heart by Dr Julie Blake
Now in its tenth year, Poetry by Heart goes from strength to strength and schools can see the many benefits with joining in. Read on for a brilliant guest blog from Dr Julie Blake, co-founder of Poetry by Heart.
An introduction to Poetry By Heart by co-founder and director, Dr Julie Blake
‘The poems we learn when we’re young stay with us for the rest of our lives. They become embedded in our thinking, and when we bring them to mind, or to our lips, they remind us who we are as people, and the things we believe in. They become personal and invaluable, and what’s more they are free gifts – there for the taking. We call it learning by heart, and I think such learning can only make our hearts bigger and stronger.’ Simon Armitage
As Simon Armitage describes so perfectly, there are many reasons to learn poetry by heart and Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition, exists to encourage young people to do just that. Poetry By Heart is open to all young people in England, aged 7 to 18. Supported by their school or at home, we invite them to choose poems they love, learn them by heart and perform them in a school or college event. School staff can then select the best performances to enter the national round of the competition, submitting entries via video upload. A panel of expert judges picks the very best of these to attend a grand finale and perform their poems live onstage at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
We aim for Poetry By Heart to be as enjoyable and easy to enter as possible, and our website is full of resources to help including lots of poems of course, both classic and contemporary, and by living poets. We hold fortnightly forums online too, a chance to chat informally with others and share tips and ideas for the competition and we’re always available on the phone for one-to-one help if you need it.
Poetry By Heart is ten now and schools who take part tend to do it year after year because the benefits are so tangible. They tell us that participation supports curriculum development, builds literacy skills, and increases enjoyment of poetry across the whole school while also boosting student confidence and well-being. The 2023 competition is open now, entry is free and taking part could be the best thing you do all year! Sign up today.
PS. It’s not just young people we invite to learn poetry by heart, adults are welcome to do it as well. Here are my top five tips to help anyone who wants to learn poetry by heart:
1. See it. Try writing out the poem by hand and illustrating it with patterns and pictures. Put your illustrated poem somewhere you can see it and say it often, visualising the images the words create in your mind.
2. Read it. Identify which bits are easier/more difficult to remember. (This can often reveal what’s going on in the poem and how it works.) Notice any words or phrases or lines that tend to trip you up – there’s often something interesting going on in those bits, something the poet is doing to slow you down and make you think.
Notice any patterns that make it easy to remember what comes next.
3. Move to it! Make up movements and gestures that match the words in the poem. Clapping or drumming along to find the poem’s beat will help as will walking in time to the poem as you speak it.
4. Listen to it. Listen to recordings of the poem (there are videos of pupil performances of poems on the Poetry By Heart website as well as poets reading with more on the Children’s Poetry Archive) or record it yourselves and play it back. Listen for the sounds of the words and the movements of the lines.
5. Speak it. Try reading each line several times using different tones of voice. Read it varying your pace, volume and timing. Mark up the poem to remind yourselves how you want to speak it – which bits are loud, which are quiet.
Dr Julie Blake, FEA, FRSL(Hon), is co-director of Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition for schools. She researches and writes about the history of poetry for children, creates digital and print anthologies of poems for children and young people, teaches poetry pedagogy and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry in the school English curriculum.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.