Welcome to the English Department, St Columba's College, Dublin, Ireland. From September 2006, this blog will regularly cover English Department news, achievements and work by pupils, and reviews of and reports on school events by pupils and Department staff. For the moment, a brief round-up of this term ...
Apart from all the usual exam work -
Our TY English evening, on May 30th in the BSR, featured essays and stories read out by 10 pupils to an audience of IV form and their parents, staff and younger pupils. Our guest was Mr Kevin McDermott of the
English Support Service, who spoke about the clarity and honesty of the pieces he had heard. Premier awards for the 2005/06 course were awarded to Sophie Haslett, Lauren O'Connell, Michael Poulton, Ellie Russell, Melanie Sheil and Rosy Temple.
The annual Voices of Poetry evening on Sunday May 28th, again in the BSR, highlighted poems from all around Ireland, Europe and the world, as well of course as home-grown ones from throughout the school. Our guest of honour was the Headmaster of
Headfort School, Dermot Dix, who read from the work of his brother, Peter, who is commemorated by our senior poetry prize.
This year the senior prize was won by Rowland Cooper, who read his poem
Sestina, which was a shortlisted poem in the under-17 section of the
Feile Filiochta competition this year. Among other readers in English and many other languages were Senior Prefect Sybil Cope, James Moore (pictured), Steffan Davies, Isabel von Viereck, Philip Kidd, Molly Sanderson, Ana Nuno and Sungha Suh.
A poem from our Primary class was also read out at the evening, the result of poetry workshops this term which have been conducted by last year's guest of honour at VofP,
Louise Callaghan, for the youngest pupils in the school.
On the drama front, congratulations to our classics colleague, Ronan Swift, and his very enjoyable TY production of The Swaggering Soldier
by Plautus in the Grange Courtyard (below) on May 31st. Theatre visits this term included a V form outing to the Walter Asmus Gate Theatre production of
Waiting for Godot and a IV form outing to Druid's production of John B. Keane's powerful
The Year of the Hiker at the Gaiety. And of course the year ended with the usual
Actiontrack week for IV form, and their Showbuild
performance on Saturday 17th June - an inventive show based on Alice in Wonderland and trains (above in rehearsal). And finally, not to forget the Language Plays by our linguistic colleagues - in French, German, Irish and Latin on May 21st.
on November 16th, 17th and 18th in the Big Schoolroom, following successes in recent years such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice and The Comedy of Errors. Many senior pupils have already expressed interest in acting, singing, dancing, set design and helping backstage. We aim to involve as many people as possible, and to present accessible and enjoyable productions of the works of the world's greatest playwright. 
We will be holding acting auditions in the first week of term in September. Two years ago we put on As You Like It (pictured), with over 100 pupils involved in a spectacular production. This year should be equally good, given the talent seen in recent drama
productions such as Grease, and musical events such as the 2006 Gala Concert.
