Now in its fourth year, the Poetry by Heart competition is designed to encourage students aged 14-18 to learn and to recite a poem to show how they have understood and enjoyed it. Entrants choose two poems, one pre-1914 and one post-1914, and are judged on several criteria including expressiveness of voice, their impression of understanding the poem and their performance. All of the selected poems come from anthologies on the Poetry by Heart website.

Joe had chosen The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde and Machines by Michael Donaghy. On winning the competition, he says: “I really enjoyed doing this; it was great fun. I used to do radio dramas and I was looking for something that would give me the chance to do something similar and so I chose to enter this competition.”

“The standard from this year’s competitors has been extremely high,” says Isobel Simons, an English Literature teacher at Peter Symonds. “This competition puts the emphasis on learning by heart, not by rote, and all of our students who took part gave a very polished performance, comparable to the standard achieved at county level.”

Joe will now be heading to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight county heats which are being held at Oaklands Catholic School and Sixth Form College on Thursday 25 February 2016.

County champions progress to the national finals, which will be taking place at Homerton College in Cambridge from 17-19 March 2015.