Idea Transcript
Competition pieces for the poetry performance class A reminder of the pieces to select from: a. aged 10 and under One poem from the following list to be performed from memory: Dirty Face by Shel Silverstein Brother by Mary Ann Hoberman The Fridge by John Mole A Centipede bu Julie Holder b. ages 11-15 Two poems to be performed from memory and selected from the following list: From a railway carriage by Robery Louis Stevenson Where's your homework by David Jackson Norman the Zebra by Jeremy Lloyd Grey Squirrel by Wes Magee C. ages 16+ A sonnet and a poem to be performed from memory Sonnets list: Shakespeare Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee....) Shakespeare Sonnet 144 (Two loves I have.....) Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sonnet 43 (How do I love thee.....) Poems list: Harmonium by Simon Armitage Blackberry Picking by Seamus Heaney Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf by Roald Dahl The telephone call by Fleur Adcock PLEASE SEE NEXT PAGES FOR THE PIECES TO LEARN. PLEASE NOTE THERE ARE EIGHT PAGES IN THIS DOCUMENT.
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Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: A (10 years and under) Dirty Face by Shel Silverstein Where did you get such a dirty face, My darling dirty-faced child? I got it from crawling along in the dirt And biting two buttons off Jeremy's shirt. I got it from chewing the roots of a rose And digging for clams in the yard with my nose. I got it from peeking into a dark cave And painting myself like a Navajo brave. I got it from playing with coal in the bin And signing my name in cement with my chin. I got it from rolling around on the rug And giving the horrible dog a big hug. I got it from finding a lost silver mine And eating sweet blackberries right off the vine. I got it from ice cream and wrestling and tears And from having more fun that you've had in years. Brother by Mary Ann Hoberman I had a little brother And I brought him to my mother And I said I want another Little brother for a change. But she said don't be a bother So I took him to my father And I said this little bother Of a brother's very strange. But he said one little brother Is exactly like another And every little brother Misbehaves a bit he said. So I took the little brother From my mother and my father And I put the little bother Of a brother back to bed.
The Fridge by John Mole Into the kitchen At half-past three And straight to the fridge What's in it for me? A strawberry yoghurt? A sticky Swiss Bun? Oh an Angel Delight Is my generous Mum! So I open the door But a breath of cold air Is all that I find There's nothing there. Now this really is not How things should be When you get home from school At half-past three. A Centipede by Julie Holder A centipede can run at great speed, Because of his number of legs, But when he hangs out his socks to dry, It costs him a fortune in pegs. A centipede likes to wear wellington boots, But because of his centipede brain, It takes such a time to sort out all the pairs That he's never in time for the train. A centipede has one hundred legs, But I'm glad I haven't because When the front of a centipede gets where it's going His back end is still where is was.
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Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: B (11-15 years) From a Railway Carriage by Robert Louis Stevenson
Now he tight-rope-runs along a branch
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
We return to our tables. Chairs scrape.
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
Teacher stands at the board, chalk poised.
And charging along like troops in a battle
No-one speaks. For a minute we secretly gloat
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
over the wonder of that squirrel
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
in leather gloves and grey fur coat.
and leaps to the next tree, does not fall.
Fly as thick as driving rain; And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Where's your homework? By David Jackson
Painted stations whistle by. Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
As soon as I got home last night, Sir
All by himself and gathering brambles;
I finished off my English homework first.
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
Put it on the kitchen table but my baby sister
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
found it. Chewed it and slavered all over it, Sir.
Here is a cart runaway in the road
So I took it into the bath to check it through
Lumping along with man and load;
like you asked us to do, Sir.
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
But reaching for the sponge
Each a glimpse and gone forever!
I dropped it in the bath. It was so soggy that
Grey Squirrel by Wes Magee
I had to put the hair drier on it. I burnt it to a crisp. Bone dry the paper was, Sir.
Noses against the classroom windows,
So I had a brainwave. I smeared Suntan lotion
teacher standing behind us, we stare out
on it to soften it up.
as a grey squirrel nimbles its way
Left it for ten minutes
over this field's million sodden leaves
and the pages started to turn brown.
on this damp November day. This morning I looked inside The trees drip, the grass is dank,
and all the writing was smudged, Sir.
the playground shines like plastic.
Could I have a new exercise book, please?
A bedraggled sun. All's still, still, except for that squirrel now busy at husks of beech nuts, nibbling his fill. Suddenly he's bolt upright, sniffing,
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and then gone, swarming up a tree trunk like Spiderman scaling a vertical wall. 3
Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: B (11-15 years) CONTINUED Norman the Zebra by Jeremy Lloyd Norman, a zebra at the zoo, Escaped and ran to Waterloo And caused a lot of consternation In the rush hour, at the station. He had an awful lot of fun Chasing folk on Platform One, And then he ran to Regent's Park And hid there until it was dark, And thought of his keeper, Mr Prout, How cross he'd be, that he'd got out So he tiptoes to the big zoo gate And found he'd got there just too late. Poor Norman had a little weep And lay down in the road to sleep And woke up early from his rest With people walking on his chest. And someone said, “I think that's new, A zebra crossing by the zoo.” And with a snort of indignation, Regretting leaving for the station, He cried, “I've had enough of that. How dare you use me as a mat. I'm going straight home to the zoo.” He was just in time for breakfast too.
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Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: C (16 years and over) One selection to be taken from the sonnet list and one from the poems list. SONNETS LIST Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
I love thee to the level of everyday's
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
I love thee with the passion put to use
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
Not shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
I shall but love thee better after death. Poetry performance class
Sonnet 144 by William Shakespeare Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
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The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend Suspect I may, but not directly tell; But being both from me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's hell: Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel fire my good one out. 5
Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: C (16 years and over) continued POEMS LIST Harmonium by Simon Armitage
Blackberry picking by Seamus Heaney
The Farrand Chapelette was gathering dust
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
in the shadowy porch of Marsden Church.
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
And was due to be bundled off to the skip.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Or was mine, for a song, if I wanted it.
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
Sunlight, through stained glass, which day to day
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
could beatify saints and raise the dead,
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
had aged the harmonium’s softwood case
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
and yellowed the fingernails of its keys.
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
And one of its notes had lost its tongue,
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
and holes were worn in both the treadles
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
where the organist’s feet, in grey, woollen socks and leather-soled shoes, had pedalled and pedalled. But its hummed harmonics still struck a chord: for a hundred years that organ had stood by the choristers’ stalls, where father and son, each in their time, had opened their throats and gilded finches – like high notes – had streamed out. Through his own blue cloud of tobacco smog, with smoker’s fingers and dottled thumbs, he comes to help me cart it away. And we carry it flat, laid on its back. And he, being him, can’t help but say that the next box I’ll shoulder through this nave will bear the freight of his own dead weight. And I, being me, then mouth in reply
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
some shallow or sorry phrase or word too starved of breath to make itself heard. [...MORE POEMS ON THE NEXT PAGES..]
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Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: C (16 years and over) continued Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf by Roald Dahl
He thought, I'm going to eat this child. Compared with her old Grandmamma
As soon as Wolf began to feel
She's going to taste like caviar.
That he would like a decent meal,
Then Little Red Riding Hood said “But Grandma,
He went and knocked on Grandma's door.
What a lovely great furry coat you have on.”
When Grandma opened it, she say
“That's wrong!” cried Wolf. “Have you forgot
The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,
To tell me what BIG TEETH I've got?
And Wolfie said, “May I come in?”
As well, no matter what you say,
Poor Grandmamma was terrified,
I'm going to eat you anyway.” The small girl smiles.
“He's going to eat me up!” she cried.
One eyelid flickers.
And she was absolutely right.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
He ate her up in one big bite.
She aims it at the creature's head
But Grandmamma was small and tough,
And bang, bang, bang, she shoots him dead.
And Wolfie wailed, “That's not enough!
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I haven't yet begun to feel
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
That I have had a decent meal!”
But what a change! No cloak of red,
He ran around the kitchen yelping,
No silly hat upon her head.
“I've got to have a second helping!”
She said “Hello, and do please note
Then added with a frightful leer,
My lovely furry WOLFSKIN COAT.”
“I'm therefore going to wait right here Till little Miss Red Riding Hood Comes home from walking in the wood.”
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He quickly put on Grandma's clothes (Of course he hadn't eaten those). He dressed himself in coat and hat. He put on shoes and after that He even brushed and curled his hair, Then sat himself on Grandma's chair. In came the little girl in red. She stopped. She stared. And then she said, “What great big ears you have, Grandma.” “All the better to hear you with ,” the Wolf replied. “What great big eyes you have, Grandma,” Said Little Red Riding Hood. “All the better to see you with,” the Wolf replied. He sat there watching her and smiled. 7
Competition pieces for the poetry performance class Age Band: C (16 years and over) continued The Telephone Call by Fleur Adcock Nearly everyone's bought a ticket They asked me “Are you sitting down?
in some lottery or another,
Right? This is Universal Lotteries,”
once at least. We buy up the files,
they said. “You've won the top prize,
feed the names into our computer,
the Ultra-super Global Special.
and see who the lucky person is.”
What would you do with a million pounds?
“Well, that's incredible,”I said.
Or, actually, with more than a million -
“It's marvellous. I will can't quite...
not that it make a lot of difference
I'll believe it when I see the cheque.”
once you're a millionaire.” And they laughed. “Oh,” they said, “there's no cheque.” “Are you OK?” they asked - “Still there?”
“But the money?” “We don't deal in money.
Come on, now, tell us, how does it feel?”
Experiences are what we deal in.
I said, “I just …..I can't believe it!”
You've had a great experience, right?
They said, “That's what they all say.
Exciting? Something you'll remember?
What else? Go on, tell us about it.”
That's your prize. So congratulations
I said, “I feel the top of my head
from all of us at Universal.
has floated off, out through the window,
Have a nice day!” And the line went dead.
revolving like a flying saucer.” “That's unusal,” they said. “Go on.” I said, “I'm finding it hard to talk. My throat's gone dry, my nose is tingling. I think I'm going to sneeze – or cry.” “That's right,” they said, “don't be ashamed of giving way to your emotions. It isn't every day you hear you're going to get a million pounds. Relax, now, have a little cry; we'll give you a moment...” “Hang on!” I said. “I haven't bought a lottery ticket for years and years. And what did you say the company's called?” They laughed again. “Not to worry about a ticket. We're Universal. We operate a retrospective Chances Module. 8