Top prize for Shay at national poetry competition
Shay Collins pictured with the Director of the National Library of Ireland Dr. Audrey Whitty.
Local students were honoured at the recent prestigious national Poetry Aloud competition. This competition challenges second-level students across the country to perform a prescribed poem from memory and the winners were announced last week.
Fifteen-year-old Shay Collins from Glenamaddy Community School, won the competition’s Intermediate Category. This is the second win in a row for Glenamaddy Community School in the competition as Luke Dolan won the senior category, as well as the overall prize, last year.
Castlerea Community School students Summer Rose and Stanford Mhanga were also finalists.
Organised by the National Library of Ireland (NLI) and Poetry Ireland, in partnership with UCC, this year’s competition drew 365 entries from 65 schools across the island of Ireland. There were 22 finalists in this year’s competition from across 14 counties, from Antrim to Kerry.
The competition has been running since 2007 and has three categories: junior, intermediate, and senior. The prescribed poems for this year were Dolphin by Catherine Ann Cullen (junior); What Then? by William Butler Yeats (intermediate) and; In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz by WB Yeats (senior).
Speaking to the Herald, Shay, who is preparing for his junior cert, said he was delighted with the win.
“There were two poems we had to do. One was ‘What Then?’ by William Butler Yeats, and the poem I chose was ‘Anseo’ by Paul Muldoon. Straight away I felt I could relate to it and that there was meaning to it. It’s a brilliant poem and I really love it. It’s about the poet as a child in school answering the role call, which is exactly what I would have done in primary school,” he said.
“I have always loved English and I was delighted when my English teacher Sarah Burke asked me to do the competition.” As someone who also entered the competition in First and Second Year, he highly recommended people to enter Poetry Aloud.
“It is just something to enjoy and try your best at. I never expected to get to the final, but I did and I enjoyed every minute of it. Of course I was a bit nervous when I was in the final, the room was full. All the other participants were there, the judges were there, parents and teachers, but when you are actually delivering the poem, the nerves left you and you just enjoyed the moment.
“It was brilliant listening to everybody. It was the same poem but it was as if you were listening to everyone saying a different poem. Everyone had interpreted it in their own way. That was the best thing about it. It was a great experience and I can’t wait to do it again next year.” Shay is from Timicat and is the son of Catriona and Seamus.
“My parents really helped me along the way,” he said and he thanked them for their help and support.
