THE National Library is looking for Kerry students to enter the annual Poetry Aloud Competition.
This year marks the eighth annual Poetry Aloud competition organised by the National Library of Ireland and Poetry Ireland, and students from all over Kerry are encouraged to enter.
Poetry Aloud, an annual poetry speaking competition for post-primary school students across the island of Ireland, was launched in 2006.
Since then, it has grown enormously from just a few hundred entries to over 1,500 in 2013. This year, finalists and winners from the competition will have an opportunity to appear on RTÉ Television.
Speaking ahead of the competition, Bríd O’Sullivan, Learning and Outreach at the National Library of Ireland (NLI), said: “We are always delighted to welcome the Poetry Aloud participants into the NLI to celebrate the joy of speaking poetry. Down through the years, students from Kerry have featured prominently in the shortlisted and prize-winning entries and we look forward to receiving all of the entries for the 2014 competition.”
The Poetry Aloud competition involves three stages: the regional heats, which take place in different venues across the country; the semi-finals; and the final, which will be held at the NLI.
There are three participant categories: Junior, Intermediate and Senior. A national winner is chosen from each category and receives a prize of €300. Book tokens to the value of €300 are also presented to a teacher from each winning school for use in stocking up the school library and the runners-up in each category receive a book token.
From the three national category winners, an overall winner is chosen each year, and awarded the Seamus Heaney Poetry Aloud Award. This overall winner receives a total prize of €500, and the perpetual trophy designed by Meath-based sculptor, Fiona Smith-Darragh.
Finalists and winners from this year’s competition will appear on RTE’s ‘The Works’ reading a selection of Ireland’s best-loved poems.
Information on how to take part in Poetry Aloud 2014 is available on the entry form here.
The competition is now open and the closing date for entries is Friday, 26th September 2014. For further information, visitwww.nli.ie and www.poetryireland.ie
