Poetry Festival embodies school values

Anyone who has sat in the Performing Arts Centre, listening to our poets from Year 7 to Year 13 perform their poems, has felt the magic of the Putney High School Poetry Festival. 

From over 500 entries, the English Department selected 48 overall finalists who had the chance to deliver their poem before an external adjudicator – this year’s judge was esteemed poet, writer and playwright, Clare Pollard. See her winners below! 

Why does the Poetry Festival capture the school’s attention and the students’ creativity quite like it does? And why does this literary form inspire such diverse responses? 

Maya Angelou had it right when she said, ‘‘Poetry can tell us what human beings are…”. The condensed form, the riddling wordplay, and the freedom from constraint allow us to distil human experience, exploring its depths and allowing emotional honesty and catharsis. Poems don’t just say things, they do things. 

The Poetry Festival embodies the four Is, the core values of Putney High School and, thus, the very essence of modern scholarship. Our student poets explore an immense breadth of themes from love and loss to rowing, popular culture and chondromalacia patella! 

The anthology of poems created showcases innovation and intellectual curiosity: students play with form, exploring sound, shape, meter, rhyme and voice; they respond to and learn from the vast lineage of poets they’ve explored in class, and they engage critically with craft, where the precision and weight of words magnify meaning. 

Their work reveals true Putney intrepidity in their creative fearlessness and bravery in tackling various subjects, often deeply personal and revealing of the very essence of what it means to be human. 

Above all, the festival itself, as well as the poetry, demonstrates Putney’s core strength in its inclusivity. The anthology shows that our students feel safe and free to express themselves and their ideas, that they feel heard and validated. Feelings we hope remain with them throughout their lives and onward journeys. 

Well done to our extraordinary winners! 

Winners List 

Award	Poem Title
Year 7 Winner	The Book – Aryana F
Year 7 Runner Up	Dear Doofus – Isabel D
Year 8 Winner	December Without You – Maria V
Year 8 Runner Up	Maybe Just a Blanket – Eva N J
Year 9 Winner	Between Foreign and Familiar – Yuchen H
Year 9 Runner Up	The Chase – Aria B
Year 10 Winner	Just Your Average FMC – Libby H
Year 10 Runner Up	First Supper (Ode to Breakfast) – Kika CDR
Year 11 Winner	(Mainstream/False) Individuality – Francesca K
Year 11 Runner Up	bike ride – Sophia U
6th Form Winner	If Your Home Was On Fire – Austin Z
6th Form Runner Up	Irish, Born in England – Mabel W
Best Performance 7-9	I Want More – Annabelle B A
Best Performance 10-13	Shattered Glass – Alice A
AI Winner	Roxy by the River – Felicity L