Anthologise
‘Anthologise’ was the title of a UK competition for school students aged 11-18 – another brilliant educational initiative of the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. The competition was administered by the Poetry Book Society and was launched by HRH the Duchess of Cornwall in September 2011.
See more at: http://www.picador.com/blog/july-2011/anthologise#sthash.WhGjGwuB.dpuf
It invited students to compile their own anthologies of poetry. The competition was judged by a panel which included laureate Carol Ann Duffy; National Poet for Wales, Gillian Clarke; Scots Makar, Liz Lochhead; poet John Agard; poet Grace Nichols; and Cambridge Professor of Children’s Poetry, Morag Styles. The winning anthology was published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, in 2013.
The original website www.anthologise.co.uk is no longer available but there is still some very interesting and useful information available on the Picador website www.picador.com Click on ‘blog’ and type ‘anthologise’ in the search bar.
Here you will find amongst other things:
A Message from Carol Ann Duffy
Advice from Poets and Anthologists
Points for Students to Consider
Information on the winning anthology
— all worth saving while they are there!
The winning collection, published by Picador in 2013, was Monkton Combe School’s anthology, The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead (Contents below)
A few minutes of googling various press releases etc about this competition will supply some heartening evidence of poetry’s continuing power to excite and inspire children. You will also find discussions of how the project supported the school curriculum and prompted students to pursue different issues through poetry of all ages and places.
I also came across another poet’s intention to expand this project. (Oxford World Book Capital Bid 2014)
http://owbc.dev.oneltd.co.uk/book-events/anthologise-2/
Oxford’s City Poet, Kate Clanchy, will expand a national initiative started by the UK’s Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, called Anthologise. This project invites children to read as much poetry as possible in order to put together their own anthologies, the best of which receive prizes.
For more information please visit: www.picador.com/poetry/prize/anthologise
Wouldn’t it be great if an Australian Publisher took up the idea?
Contents of Anthologise 2012 winning anthology:
Appreciation of Nature
On the Grasshopper and Cricket, John Keats
Through That Door, John Cotton
My Idle Dreams Roam Far, Li Yu (Chinese)
The Praise of Spring, Gonzalo de Berceo
Earth Songs, John Clarke
The Earth and The People, Traditional (Inuit)
Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now, A.E. Housman
Sonnet, John Clare
The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Langston Hughes
Earth Cries, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze
Moss-Gathering, Theodore Roethke
Cycle of Nature
An Alphabet for the Planet, Riad Nourallah
Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney
Place, W.S. Merwin
The River in March, Ted Hughes
A Beetle Called Derek, Benjamin Zephaniah
Nature, Loriah Leah
Human Ecology
Cultivators, Susan Taylor
The Shepherd, William Blake
The Case, Kathleen Jamie
The Magnificent Bull, Dinka Tribe
Close to Nature, Nnamdi Ben Nneji
Inside my Zulu Hut, Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali
I Tell the Bees, Jo Shapcott
Gathering the Honey, Virgil
Destruction
Nothing Gold Can Stay, Robert Frost
Report to Wordsworth, Boey Kim Cheng
Lily of the Valley, Alice Oswald
Trailing Arbutus, Gloria Sarasin
Endangered Species, David Constantine
The Flower-Fed Buffaloes, Vachel Lindsay
Pheasant, Sylvia Plath
Almanac, Primo Levi
Estuary, Ian Hamilton Finlay
Harvest Hymn, John Betjeman
The Recital of Lost Cities, Lavinia Greenlaw
The Woman in the Moon, Carol Ann Duffy
Sustainability
The Trees, Philip Larkin
The Eclipse, Richard Eberhart
The Cloud, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Si Dieu N’existait Pas, John Burnside
Heavenly Grass, Tennessee Williams
I’m Alive, I Believe in Everything, Lesley Choyce
Tomorrow’s Child, Glenn Thomas
A Light Exists in Spring, Emily Dickinson
This article was kindly provided by Australian children’s poet, Kate O’Neil
Australian Children’s Poetry 