POETRY SEMIFINALS & FINALS 2022
Kindly hosted by St. George's College on October 27th & 28th
There are areas in our brains that understand earlier (some say better) the gist of what the person we’re watching and hearing is trying to convey to us. We feel it, we comprehend it. Maybe that is what T.S. Eliot meant when he wrote that “genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”?
If these words are also intended to be spoken aloud then we also need great communicators, people who can grasp the meaning and emotion embedded in the written page, and through the performance of a recitation touch our hearts and minds. By making a poem their own, these communicators can bridge the lives of the poets with those of their audience. A magical act of transfiguration and rebirth.
And what an astonishing bunch of young communicators we had through these two days of poetry recitation! Young people between Grades 3 and 8, from La Serena to Concepción, marvelled us with their takes on poems funny, thought-provoking and filled with wonder. We even had a surprise love declaration to esteemed thespian Tom Holland…
Participants from the following schools accompanied us during the semifinals: Campvs College, Colegio Internacional SEK, Craighouse, Cumbres, Everest, The Grange School, The International School La Serena, La Maisonette, Orchard College, Pedro de Valdivia (Las Condes), St. Georges’ College, Villa María Academy & The Wessex School ,
Our kind hosts at St. George’s College, through the extremely capable hands of Marcela Lafourcade and her teams of students and workers, made everything go as swiftly and efficiently as we could have dreamed of. Thank you so much!
And of course we would never have been able to do justice to our participants if we hadn’t counted on our volunteer judges, both for viewing the videos sent for our first heat and the in-person semifinals and finals. Our judges were: Loreto Abascal, Christopher Bembo, Louise Campbell, Julia Cogan, Andrea Gaete, Cristina Jeppesen, Fernanda Lara, Lisa Miller, Camila Mora, María Paz Rivera, Sally Thompson, Francisca Torres, Anna Zappa and of course our own Jacinda Forster & Lynnann Lovejoy.
So, without further ado, we present to you our semifinalists and winners!
TRAVELLING TROPHY FOR POETRY
The Travelling Trophy for Outstanding Performance in Poetry is given each year after the finals to the school that has the most points according to how many participants they sent and how many 3rd, 2nd and 1st places they have. According to our Handbook we allocate points in the following manner:
1st Place: 5 points
2nd Place: 3 points
3rd Place: 2 points
All participants that enter their video in our First Round: 1 point.
This year, and for the first time in our competition’s history, the Travelling Trophy is awarded to Villa María Academy, who reached 29 points. Congratulations to them! Closely behind them were Colegio Cumbres and The International School of La Serena, who came in 2nd and 3rd place respectively. Photo to be posted shortly!