The Chiswick Book Festival
Poetry stretches the imagination and expands the vocabulary and at St Augustine’s Priory we delight in our pupils’ enjoyment of this wondrous world of language and metaphor. In July we wrote about the success achieved by St Augustine’s Priory pupils in the Chiswick Book Festival Young People’s Poetry Competition 2017. The festival ran from 14th – 18th September and on 16th September the prize-giving was held which was attended by several of our pupils to receive their awards.
Here, Lucy Williams and Lily Rai from Lower IV tell us about their experiences at the prize giving.
First, Lucy: ‘On Saturday 16th September girls from St Augustine’s Priory from Form III and Lower IV were invited to the Chiswick Book Festival as they had been awarded prizes in a poetry competition in which all schools in the local area had been invited to participate during the summer term of last year. The girls from Form III with winning entries in the commendation category were Ava Bileckyj with “Life as an 11 year old girl” and Aamina Hussain with “Space”. The winners from Lower IV were Millie Vadon who won First Prize with “I saw a Dancing Bear”, Lucy Williams who won Second Prize with “Seesaw”, Lily Rai who won joint third prize with “The Stray” and Lillian Rodney who won a prize in the commendation category with her poem, “Eye of the Storm”. The prizes were lovely books which the girls were delighted with. Congratulations to everyone who entered and a big thank you to our English teacher, Miss Barrett.
Lily Rai, Lower IV, takes up the story, ‘Our English teacher, Miss Barrett set our class the challenge of writing a poem. I was inspired to write my poem “The Stray” by my love of animals, especially cats. I have six cats and the poem which I wrote was based upon my three legged cat Sootica who was a stray that I rehomed from the RSPCA.
I was very happy that Miss Barrett chose to enter my poem in the annual Chiswick Book Festival Poetry competition and I was thrilled to discover that I had won joint third prize in the Year 7 category.
I was invited to attend the prize giving ceremony which was held during the festival at St Michael and All Angels Church in Chiswick, which was very exciting. Many speakers and famous authors participated in the festival and David Baddiel spoke on the day of the prize giving about the children’s books he has written.
I was particularly proud of the fact that, in the Year 7 category, pupils from St Augustine’s Priory won first, second, joint third and the commendation awards. Children from many schools attended the prize giving ceremony and the judges explained what they had particularly liked about each of our poems. I received a certificate and a prize of two books, one of which is a poetry book of poems from each of the four seasons, which I am enjoying reading. Winning this prize has inspired me to write many more poems.’
