We head off today on our Easter holidays. A good thing for Seniors to do over the coming weeks is to compose entries for the Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry. The rubric is below:-
All entries are to be typed and sent to Mr.Canning at lcanning@staff.stcolumbas.ie by the evening of Thursday 22nd May.
Entries should contain a portfolio of between two and five poems based on or inspired by the idea of either:- PLACE or PEOPLE or PROMISES.
Poems should be at least ten lines long, and typed. The winning entry will be based on the overall standard of the entrant’s body of poems. There will also be a prize for the BEST POEM if it is not in the winner’s selection. All other strong entries will be posted on www.sccenglish.ie
The English Department will also give smaller book-tokens to strong entries that do not win the Prize.
You can treat the ideas, ‘Place’, or ‘People’ or ‘Promises’ in a free way: any connection is fine, as long as the poems are clearly connected by image, inspiration, theme, form, situation, context …
The Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry was presented by the Dix family in memory of Peter, who died in the Lockerbie tragedy in 1988. The Memorial, by sculptor Joe Sloan, is kept in the Library
and inscribed with the names of past winners.
The next choice for the SCC Book Club is I Am Malala
by Malala Yousafzai. We will be meeting to discuss it late in the
summer term. The book is available in your local library, the school
library, bookshops or on an e-reader.
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one
girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for
her right to an education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when
she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the
head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and
few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous
recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley
in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At
sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the
youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
In her Transition Year Extended Essay this year, Ciara Dempsey gained a distinction for her writing on 'The Consequences of Love', comparing two novels - Arthur Golden's Memoirs of A Geisha and George Orwell's 1984 - and two plays: Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Ciara writes:
"I hoped that with these stories I would be able to view as many different kinds of love as possible, to give me a better amount to compare, which I guess should have made it easier. The reason I chose this topic is really quite simple, I thought it would be easy. Unfortunately for me I found that not to be the case. That’s not to say that the topic has to be hard, but I know I personally found it difficult to write anything for it. However, in the end I hope it has all come together to be enjoyable for you to read."
Read the full essay here.
Many congratulations to III former Nyla Jamieson, who has been shortlisted in the Junior category of the Eason Creates Creative Writing competition. Her story, along with 8 others, will shortly be published on www.easonedition.com, and the overall winner will be selected by a combined public and judge-based vote.
