When the School put Rishi Watsalya forward for a national poetry recitation competition, he set out both to put smiles on the faces of his audience – and to send shivers down their spine.
And according to the Poetry By Heart competition judges, Rishi, who had previously impressed his teachers in an internal QE poetry memorisation and recitation contest, managed to do just that.
A Year 7 pupil, he received a Highly Commended certificate for his performance of Walter de la Mare’s mysterious, supernatural The Listeners, published in 1912, and of James Reeves’s 1964 whimsical nonsense poem, Mr Kartoffel.
In her judgment, the Director of the competition, Julie Blake, said that for his first poem, Rishi gave “a well-paced recitation which created the right atmosphere of mystery and suspense”. Regarding Mr Kartoffel, she added: “We loved the way you engaged with your poem and we enjoyed the spirited way in which you approached it. You brought out the humour in the poem very well.”
Poetry By Heart was founded in 2012 by educator Dr Blake and by Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate 1999-2009. In addition to the annual competition, there is a website with teaching and learning resources for all ages.
QE English teacher Panayiota Menelaou explained how Rishi came to be selected to take part in the national event. “Initially, we ran an internal competition within the School in which all Year 7 pupils were required to learn by heart and perform a poem of their choice. We held classroom-based heats and then an internal final, and Rishi was chosen as the overall winner.”
For Poetry By Heart, Rishi had to learn two poems, a pre-1914 and a post-1914 poem, which were recorded and submitted to the judges.
“Rishi recited the poems with confidence, and I was very impressed with his use of voice intonation, body movements and hand gestures which helped bring the poem to life and give the words meaning, said Mrs Menelaou, who oversaw QE’s participation in the event.
Head of English Robert Hyland congratulated Rishi on his success: “He has shown an outstanding effort here, to be able to perform two poems with the confidence and understanding shown by Rishi is highly impressive.
“There are few better ways to get to understand a poem than being able to perform it – each decision made by the reader about tone, pace, rhythm and emphasis has to be based on an understanding of what the poem and the poet are trying to communicate,” he added.
Rishi himself said he that participating in the event was “extremely fun!” He chose The Listeners because “it was quite mysterious and chilling,” and give him plenty of opportunity to stir up the emotions “For contrast, my second poem, Mr Kartoffel, was quite funny and wacky, and when I first read it, it definitely put a smile on my face.”
Rishi explained the secret to his success: “When learning my poems, I discovered that it was much easier to learn small sections at a time, rather than trying to do it all in one go. When I was performing, I really meant what I was saying and ‘became’ my character, so I really enjoyed it! My aim was to make my audience feel engaged and drawn in to my poems.”
Assistant Head (Pupil Involvement) Crispin Bonham-Carter said: “Poetry should be celebrated loudly! Its ideas, sounds and rhythms should resonate around a school – especially a school founded by Shakespeare’s generation. Well done, Rishi Watsalya for continuing to beat our poetic drum and well done to all who took part.”
The Listeners
By Walter de la Mare
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Mr Kartoffel
By James Reeves
Mr Kartoffel’s a whimsical man;
He drinks his beer from a watering-can,
And for no good reason that I can see
He fills his pockets with china tea.
He parts his hair with a knife and fork
And takes his ducks on a Sunday walk.
Says he, “If my wife and I should choose
To wear our stockings outside our shoes,
Plant tulip bulbs in the baby’s pram
And eat tobacco instead of jam,
And fill the bath with cauliflowers,
That’s nobody’s business at all but ours.”
Says Mrs. K., “I may choose to travel
With a sack of grass or a sack of gravel,
Or paint my toes, one black, one white,
Or sit on a bird’s nest half the night –
But whatever I do that is rum or rare,
I rather think that is my affair.
So fill up your pockets with stamps and string,
And let us be ready for anything!”
Says Mr. K. to his whimsical wife,
“How can we face the storms of life,
Unless we are ready for anything?
So if you’ve provided the stamps and the string,
Let us pump up the saddle and harness the horse
And fill him with carrots and custard and sauce,
Let us leap on him lightly and give him a shove
And it’s over the sea and away, my love!”
Each Year 7 form put forward a team made up of three or four boys. First place went to Pearce, with team members Ameen Elamin, Kyle Goldband, Tuhin Mitra and Nittant Moudgil scoring an emphatic victory.
“They were allowed to use their text books to help, as the ‘vocab’ we used was taken from the Year 7 course, but the sentences were pitched to be extra-challenging, particularly in terms of grammatical structures.”
The four boys overcame the challenge of having to work through lockdown – depriving them of access to tools and of the opportunity to do a live construction site visit – to put together a fully-illustrated 66-page project report.
The boys had the option of either improving on the ‘DustCube’-type device – they actually stripped one down to investigate how it worked – or of designing an entirely new product.
With coronavirus restrictions ruling out a physical visit to a site, Mr Wood instead arranged for them to make a virtual site visit to 80 Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, London, where the interior was being renovated by Morgan Lovell.
The collective – a collaborative blog written and produced by Cambridge University linguists – awarded Vineeth joint first prize in the senior individual category for his closely argued seven-minute 
Vineeth explored the various academic theories about the origins of these sounds and how they developed. He looked at why retroflexes are common across hundreds of different languages throughout the Indian sub-continent, yet are relatively rare in other parts of the world.
Vineesh concluded: “This is what is amazing about retroflexes: the profound impact that they have on the complex sociology of south Asia, spreading across the tongues of people from a diversity of cultures, religions and backgrounds in a way that nothing else possibly could….Retroflexes seem to bind all of south Asia together. Despite making us seem homogenous and often risible to the western world, [their] history can give us a glimpse into the complex interactions between diverse cultures thousands of years ago.”
Along with Arnav and his fellow gold-medal winners, a further nine boys received silver medals and three took bronze. Thus, 20 of QE’s 21 entrants won medals, while nationally only 25% of the 8,476 competitors were medal-winners. All the QE contestants were from Year 13 and volunteered to take part, competing online from home. They completed two multiple-choice sessions of 45 minutes each.