Makars join forces to help contest reach more pupils
SOME of Scotland’s leading poets, including the Makar Jackie Kay, are writing to their high schools to encourage students to memorize and perform poetry.
Former Makar Liz Lochhead, the Edinburgh Makar Christine De Luca, WN Herbert, the Makar for Dundee, and Jim Carruth, the poet laureate of Glasgow, are all writing to their old schools to support the drive.
Each has written to their former schools to encourage them to take part in Poetry by Heart Scotland, a national competition encouraging students to memorize and perform poetry.
Ms Kay has written to Bishopbriggs Academy, Ms Lochhead to Dalziel High School in Motherwell, Ms De Luca to Anderson High School in Lerwick, and Mr Carruth to Johnstone High in Johnstone.
Mr Herbert is planning on writing to several high schools in Dundee as part of his role as Dundee Makar.
The Scottish Poetry Library (SPL) has opened the Poetry by Heart competition, and is encouraging people, poets or not, to write to their old high school to urge them to take part.
Launched in 2014, Poetry By Heart Scotland is an annual nationwide competition for schools, run by the Scottish Poetry Library, that challenges students in S4 to S6 to memorize two poems, one from before 1914 and one from after, and perform them before an audience.
The SPL explained: “Memorising and performing poems has many benefits.
“It boosts young people’s confidence and helps to prepare them for public speaking later in life.
“Recent research also suggests that students who memorise passages of literature can actually recall more information overall as it improves concentration.”
Elli Mackay, who was the joint winner of Poetry by Heart 2015, said: “This competition has given me the ability to be confident about new experiences and along the way I’ve developed an unexpected but profound love of poetry.”
It is hoped that the five letters written by leading Scottish poets will encourage others to follow their lead.
Ms Lochhead said: “You should learn poems by heart because they come from the heart.
“When I was at school, we learned poems like we learned the times tables.
“I don’t think I would have become a poet, I wouldn’t even have become a person who reads poems, if I hadn’t learned them by heart.”