Seventeen-year-old Charlie Liddell, a pupil at Durham Sixth Form Centre, Durham has been crowned Poetry By Heart National Champion in the Grand Finale of the national poetry speaking competition held at Shakespeare’s Globe in London on Monday 7 July.
Charlie chose to perform ‘The Wife of Bath’ by Geoffrey Chaucer for the judges and he also performed ‘What the Chairman told Tom’ by Basil Bunting on The Globe’s main stage, for an 800-strong audience of schools and fellow poetry lovers. VIP guests at the event also included Catherine McKinnell MP, Minister of State (Minister for School Standards).
Charlie’s performance of The Wife of Bath, in Chaucer’s original language, impressed and entertained the judges, poets Daljit Nagra, Patience Agbabi, Liz Berry, Valerie Bloom, Glyn Maxwell, Paul Munden and Jean Sprackland.
“This clear and memorable performance brought out the musicality, cheekiness and humanity of the original”, said the judges,
“Charlie made it sound like Chaucer’s language was his own.”
The Poetry By Heart competition invites young people to choose a poem, learn it by heart and perform it aloud. Established in 2012 by then Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, the competition attracts huge numbers of entries: over 1,600 schools took part; almost 60,000 poems were learned by heart; and there were over 4,300 video entries to the finals.
Congratulating Charlie, and all the young performers taking part in the Poetry By Heart Grand Finale, poet and judge Daljit Nagra said,
“As you stand on the stage here at Shakespeare’s Globe today, you are not just reciting verse, you are keeping alive the ancient dream of poetry as intrinsic to body and soul.”
