Burning Bright in the Forests of the Night

Young Reciters at ESU Chile’s Poetry Recitation Contest
Semifinals and Finals

Hosted by Villa Maria Academy
Thursday 5 and Friday 6 November 2026

“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

(Last stanza from William Blake’s “The Tyger”, poem selected by our 8th Grade 1st Place winner)

Where does Poetry come from and what is it for?

A sealed box. The key in your clenched fist. The keyhole, within. Relax your fingers and the box pops open. It smells of drying peaches on a tin roof.

A straight line drawn on paper, folded nine times until the crease is hard as marble. Is the line still straight?

A bird lays an egg, from which the same bird cracks free, fully formed. Watching on your screen, you name him Gene. Overcome by a sorrow you cannot place, you stifle a sob. The bird lays an egg again.

A rivulet running down to icy shores. Last winter they built a dam upstream. Eerily quieter now, yet the rumble underground is keeping the worms up all night.

An adobe wall comes tumbling down, big clumps of grass dishevelled from the dry mud squared by hands unknown. You chip a nail and draw blood, gasping and coughing a few times. It’s the dust in the air.

Where does Poetry come from and what is it for?

Poetry comes from the realm of daydreams, where your imagination is King, Queen, Bard and the air you breathe. A realm larger and older than infinity.

Where music is the legs that carry you around, and longing an unwrapped, half-eaten, never-ending chocolate bar, tucked but not forgotten in your back pocket.

Where dogs are more verb than noun, where lamps are lit inside empty trains thrumming through the rain, and masked strangers riding fire-eyed tygers call you from the forests of the night.

It’s a sealed box, containing dust and a paper folded nine times, on which a bird has drawn an egg. It smells of peaches drying on a tin roof, after a summer storm.

This year’s theme for Duologue and Poetry was “Nature”. We hope this selection inspired our students and teachers to open their hearts to the sounds and meanings we can invoke with our imagination by paying attention all around us!

We had over 130 participants in the competition, a very high number, considering this year we allowed only one participant per grade per school and registration was right in the middle of some of the worst Spring weather Santiago has ever seen.

What has kept happening, year on year, is more schools have been entering participants in more grades, and adding a poetry recitation unit in their curriculum. As well, many of our participants semifinalists’s teachers had attended the poetry teacher workshop and had done the suggested activities. This has enhanced the competition both in quantity and quality, letting us keep on discovering even more voices!

32 schools participated in our virtual Round 1, with 27 schools advancing to the semi-final. Split over two days (Grades 6 to 8 on 5 November; Grades 3 to 5 on 6 November), we had 10 semi-finalists in each grade, from schools spanning La Serena to Curicó. 60 semifinalists in total, 30 for each date.

We had finalists from 12 different schools over the two dates. Another figure to confirm how this competition has grown in depth and breadth the last few years.

Last year we changed the format and had all grades semifinals and finals in the big auditorium, by taking turns between grades. We repeated the format as this way every participant had the chance to recite their poem in the big stage and everybody got to see everyone else. We hope it was as enjoyable for our audience as it was for us!

Congratulations to Villa María Academy who were this year’s recipients of the Travelling Trophy for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Recitation. This trophy goes to the school with most points awarded for participation and podium places. In second place came Colegio La Maisonnette, and third place Colegio Monte Tabor y Nazaret.

Further down below, you can see who our finalists were for each grade.

OUR THANKS

We would like to thank Mrs. Loreto Jullian, Mrs. Lisa Miller, their team and students from Villa María Academy for a flawless event. And making us feel at home!

Big thank you to Books and Bits, Cuentrete and Worchips, who gifted our Poetry finalists with some very appetising prizes!

Last, but certainly not least, our thanks to the Judges throughout the competition -virtual round 1 and in-person semifinals/finals-, as their prestige, experience and dedication ensure we can provide our students with the academic heft they deserve. They come from chilean universities, schools, language institutes, independent practices, from Arica to Punta Arenas (for real!). This year, it was also a requisite for participation that every school register a teacher for judging in Round 1: Amparo Clemente, Andrea Valdivieso, Andrés Araya, Andrés Gutiérrez, Anne Westmacott, Carla Varas, Catalina Margozzini, Claire Kamerling, Claudia Herrera, Claudia Boniche, Consuelo Narvaez, Cristián Palacios, Eduardo Donoso, Emilio Lillo, Erika Mery, Fabiola Troncoso, Felipe Reyes, Fernanda Rodríguez, Flor Toledo, Florencia Valdés, Francisca Jiménez, Gloria Faúndes, Ingrid López, Ivanna Thenoux, Izaack Mwangi, Jan Updegraff, Javiera Catalán, Jemma Holding, Joaquín Álvarez, José Curiqueo, Juan Carlos Catalán, Katherine Gutiérrez, Katherine Toro, Lisa Miller, Loreto Abascal, Loreto Fernández, Luis Daniel Ortiz, Macarena Sepúlveda, Maggie Baeza, Magdalena Vásquez, María Francisca Villarroel, María José Reyes, María Luisa Leon, Maria Verónica Widow, Mariana Bolton, Mario Urrutia, Maya Westcott, Michelle Castillo, Natalia Moreno, Neela Chatta, Olivia Evans, Paola Baeza, Paola Sanz, Philip Rovnak, Rachel Murton, Rodrigo Martínez, Rodrigo Sirón, Sandra Raggi, Susan Roraff, Tania González, Teresa Muñoz, Trinidad Rojas, Valeria Guajardo, Valeria Romero, Victoria Troncoso.