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Award-winning poet and Old Elizabethan Anthony Anaxagorou has helped current pupils explore the power of poetry in a special six-week workshop.

The first cohort of Year 9 and 10 boys has now completed the after-school sessions, which were led by poet-in-residence Anthony (OE 1994–1999) and facilitated by School Librarian Ciara Murray.

Anthony said: “The poems produced by the students over the six weeks showed they have an acute eye for locating the poetry in everyday occurrences, as well as the more nuanced or complex. Their writing was highly imaginative, broad and impressively original.”

Anthony has published several volumes of poetry and essays. In 2015, he won the Groucho Maverick Award.

In the workshops, the boys were given a prompt or exercise every week and encouraged to write a poem in 15 minutes. They then shared their work with the group.

One early exercise required participants to think of ordinary nouns such as table, window, sky, and then assign unexpected adjectives to them. They then had to create a poem using as many of them as possible. As they grew in confidence, boys also began to move away from the traditional idea that poetry has to rhyme, and explored the importance of metaphor when writing a successful poem.

The boys also spent one session analysing a poem by the current Oxford Professor of Poetry, Simon Armitage, entitled It’s Not What You Do, It’s What It Does to You, and then wrote their own versions. “Poetry is not just about getting the right answers; it’s about how it makes you feel” said Anthony.

He introduced the boys to different methods of performance and what they needed to think about when reading their work out loud.
Finally, they were asked to choose one or two of their best pieces to edit in the final session, with individual input from Anthony. Their final choice of poems will be submitted to the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Competition 2017.

The workshop participants were:

• Year 10: Tobi Durojaiye; Hamza Khan; Yusuf Salih; Saifullah Shah and Jamie Watkin-Rees
• Year 9: Senthuran Jeevan; Dominic Kumaresan; Ayodimeji Ojelade; Christopher Reid; Jack Runchman; Eashan Sehdev, Kapilan Sivanesan and Adhil Sunil Kumar.

“I was hugely impressed with what the boys were able to come up with in such a short space of time, and it was great to see their individual styles developing and their confidence growing as the workshop progressed,” said Ms Murray

The workshops will run for another six weeks from 6th June for aspiring poets in Year 8.

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Below are three poems produced during the workshops.

The Little Things in LIfe by Jack Runchman

Solitary Sea by Kapilan Sivanesan

When Freedom Fell from the Sky by Saifullah Shah

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A QE boy has won a financial journalism writing competition for the second year in a row.

Nikhil Shah’s essay took the top prize in the 17-19 age category of The London Institute of Banking & Finance’s Young Financial Journalist of the Year competition, mirroring the achievement last year of Sahil Suleman, who is now in Year 13. Nikhil was one of four QE competition finalists this year, with fellow Year 12 pupils Nikhil Khetani, Karnan Sembian and Chaoxuan Ouyang also short-listed.

As well as these individual successes, QE has also achieved team success in the Student Investor Challenge. Four Year 11 boys – Bashmy Basheer, Akshat Sharma, Mipham Samten and John Tan – were firstly selected from around 10,000 teams to go forward to a semi-final.  There, they emerged in 19th place out of the 500 teams competing.

Head of Economics Liane Ryan said: “I congratulate all the boys involved in these two competitions. Nikhil’s victory was a fantastic achievement. And the team in the Student Investor contest did very well indeed: I have high hopes for them over the next couple of years in the Sixth Form.”

The journalism competition was judged by Steph McGovern (pictured), BBC Breakfast presenter and financial journalist, who described Nikhil’s essay as “a piece with personality and a solid understanding of the financial challenges young people face, a really nicely structured article”.

Nikhil won a prize of £150 for his essay entitled How will financial education help me meet the financial challenges I will face throughout my life?

Old Elizabethan Demis Hasabbis, a world-leading artificial intelligence expert, is now using AI to speed up the development of new drugs which may help in the battle against Alzheimer’s disease, he told Kirsty Young when he appeared on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.

His company, DeepMind, was bought by Google for a reported £400m in 2014 – and Demis said his motivation in selling was to enable the business to step up its work.

“For me, it was nothing to do with the money – in fact, our investors mostly didn’t want to sell even though it was a lot of money – it’s because I was convinced that by joining forces with Google, we could accelerate the success of the mission.” Demis explained that he was able to employ more expert researchers, thanks to Google’s injection of cash.

In March 2016, DeepMind hit the headlines when its programme, AlphaGo, beat a world champion player of the game, Go. DeepMind, of which he is CEO, is now using variants of those algorithms in its medical research into how proteins fold into a 3d structure. The 3d structure determines how the protein is going to act in the body, and faulty folding may be responsible for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. “If you could take an amino acid sequence and just tell straightaway how the 3d structure is going to look just from that, then you would accelerate drug design by five or ten years.”

Demis said the “most exciting breakthrough” in which DeepMind is currently involved is bringing together two two types of AI: deep learning, which uses neural networks to mimic what the brain does, and reinforcement learning, which is about using a model of the world to make decisions. “These two systems together, which is our big innovation, gives you in some sense the rudimentary beginnings of a full intelligence.”

Demis was at QE from 1988–1990. He had a period of home schooling, and paid tribute to his “bohemian” parents, from whom he learned that “you don’t have to be constricted by social norms”. During these early years, Demis played chess and was at one time the world’s second highest-ranked player of his age, but says he had an epiphany at a large chess tournament in Liechtenstein when he realised that all the brainpower in evidence there could be put to better use for the benefit of humanity.

He took his A-levels aged 16 at Christ’s College in Finchley and won a place at Cambridge, but since he was too young to take it up, he began his initial career in computer gaming by working for the British company, Bullfrog Productions, after winning a competition which had a job there as its prize. Arriving the day after his examinations, he was too young to be legally employed, so was paid in cash. He was the lead programmer and co-designer of the highly successful Theme Park game.

When he eventually went to Cambridge, where he took a double first in the Computer Science Tripos at Queens’ College, he partied hard and had “an amazing three years”. He went on to take a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience where he deliberately chose to study topics where AI had failed so far: memory and imagination.

Demis, who celebrated his fortieth birthday in July 2016, fell in love with computing from an early age, buying a Spectrum ZX with his chess winnings. “I have always felt…that computers can be this kind of magical device that can extend the power of the mind – I think AI is the end point of that.”

Demis, who is himself a father and is married to a scientist involved in Alzheimer’s research, impressed Kirsty Young with his warmth, openness, thoughtfulness and lack of condescension, so she asked him if he had any advice for parents of very clever children. He replied: “I think what I would do is encourage them to explore heavily when they are young and really get a wide range of experiences, so encourage deepness and expertise in things, but not at the expense of everything else. Life is so rich; you should partake in all of it. I think the kind of skills I would teach children today are the ability to learn, rather than a specific thing that you are learning. One of the first things you should learn about…is about yourself; how do you work best, what do you want, what are your dreams, what are you excited about?

“It’s important to be very broad in your upbringing so that you are used to understanding different points of view…and learning how to deal with that sort of disagreement in a constructive way.”

The rules of Desert Island Discs allow interviewees to pick one book (besides the Bible and works of Shakespeare) and one luxury item. Demis choose Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – “it’s such a beautiful world he created” – and a solar-powered chess computer.

As usual for the programme, he chose eight pieces of music, naming as his favourite, Vangelis’ Tears in Rain, which was part of the soundtrack to the film, Blade Runner. “I could mull over those lines, I think – they are beautiful poetry – for a very long time.”

The other music was: Watermark, by Nicky Ryan, Roma Shane Ryan and Eith Ni-Bhraonain; Justified and Ancient, by Tammy Wynette with The KLF; The Narcotic Suite; Skylined, by The Prodigy; The Garden is Becoming a Robe Room, by the modern classical composer, Michael Nyman; Who Wants to Live Forever, by Queen; Motherboard, by Daft Punk, and First Step by Hans Zimmer.

Almost all QE boys taking part in this year’s Junior Maths Challenge won certificates, placing them among the top 40% entrants nationally.

A total of 292 QE Year 7 and 8 pupils entered the UK Mathematics Trust’s competition, and 279 of them, or 96%, won certificates, with 174 awarded gold, 77 silver and 28 bronze. Across the country, the top 40% receive gold, silver and bronze certificates in the ratio 1:2:3, and each school receives a Best in School certificate.

Around 1,200 of the highest scorers nationally are invited to take part in the Junior Mathematical Olympiad. Twenty-eight QE boys have qualified for the Junior Olympiad, with a further 88 reaching the competition’s other follow-on round, the Junior Kangaroo.

QE’s Best in School Award went to Andy Kwak (pictured above left), of Year 8, with a score of 130 out of 135. “I’m really pleased, but I think I will have to work a lot harder to do well in the Olympiad,” he said.

The Best in Year 7 title was awarded jointly to Bhunit Santhiramoulesan and Mukund Soni, who both scored 127.

Assistant Head of Mathematics Wendy Fung said: “We are delighted with how well the boys have done and look forward to the results of the Olympiad and Kangaroo.”

Old Elizabethan William Forrester has been presented with his Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award at Buckingham Palace.

During the ceremony, William (OE 2009–2016) took the opportunity to share his experiences of fulfilling the demanding requirements of the award with the Earl of Wessex, who is a trustee of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. The presenter at the palace was British Army Officer David Love, a Staff Officer with the Royal Military Police and an expedition co-ordinator for both the military and for the D of E scheme.

To achieve gold, William was required to volunteer for 12 months, learn a skill over six months and participate in a fitness activity for 12 months, as well as taking part in a week-long residential course and planning and undertaking an expedition in wild country.

For fitness, William turned to his longstanding passion for Ju-Jitsu – in 2013, he was named the U16 British Champion in both Grappling and Takedown in the sport’s Ishin Ryu (One Heart/Mind School). He fulfilled the volunteering requirement by teaching Ju-Jitsu to 4-11 year-olds. For the six-month skill requirement, he concentrated on the piano.

He completed the residential week on the Isle of Arran, where the focus was on conservation work. After a four-day practice expedition in the Peak District, he and his fellow award candidates headed off to the Brecon Beacons, where they had to battle through horrendous weather: it was very cold and, in addition, it rained non-stop for four days, which made both navigation and communicating with team mates almost impossible.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to William on receiving the Gold Award: I know that it was a proud day both for him and his parents. He certainly made his mark as a pupil at the School and this award reflects his characteristic determination, resilience and commitment in pursuit of a goal.”

William is now reading for a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at Sheffield.

His interest in engineering took wing while he was at QE. In Year 9, William and a classmate, Ollie Chick, set up an engineering club for his year. In Year 12, he spent three days at a summer school on aerospace engineering organised by the educational charity, The Smallpeice Trust.

Also during his time in the Sixth Form, he was part of an award-winning team of four formed under the Engineering Development Scheme’s Engineering Education Scheme. The team’s solution to the problem of dust particle inhalation on construction sites – a water-fed broom – won the South East Regional Final of the Constructing Excellence 2015 competition. They then progressed to the national finals, where they were the only school team and were up against professionals. As part of the national final requirements, the QE pupils gave very well received presentations to two meetings of the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), the world’s largest occupational health & safety organisation. Their invention even attracted the attention of household products company, Vileda, which wanted to create a prototype product.

William maintains close links with the School and is currently an invigilator at QE during his university vacations. His father, Peter, accompanied William to Buckingham Palace, and his mother, Karen, met them both for lunch after the ceremony. Mr and Mrs Forrester have been longtime stalwarts of the Friends of Queen Elizabeth’s.