In the poem ‘The Hope of My Heart,’John McCrae describes the love that exists beyond the grave and a speaker’s worry for his little, fair maiden. The speaker describes how he was forced to leave her loved one behind. He cared for her deeply. When he is absent, he thinks she is unsafe in this world. Hence, he prays to God to protect her. He has to make sure when she dies comes to heaven. The poet’s love for the maiden is best expressed in these lines: Children consistently tell us that learning a poem is fun. That can mean many things but includes the freedom to choose a poem for themselves, the difficulty of the challenge, the risk and the dare of performing their poem, and the immediate gratification of the respect of their friends and relatives when they take that risk. Focus Pupils who succeed in learning and performing a poem by heart, however short, feel an incredible sense of achievement. We think it’s to do with a tangible sense of mastery: the child either gets to the end of their poem or they don’t, and they can measure for themselves how well they’ve done it. This can be especially powerful for children with Special Educational Needs, low literacy levels and those who otherwise struggle to access the curriculum. Enjoyment Those with warm memories are often ardent, lifelong advocates of learning a poem by heart, but their experience can be so embedded in particular relationships and contexts that it can be harder to tease out a more generalisable set of ideas about the value to children’s learning. What exactly are the benefits to children of learning a poem by heart? In ten years of running Poetry By Heart we’ve listened avidly to the stories and testament of many thousands of teachers, librarians and pupils who have taken part, in every school type and every corner of the country. Here are nine things we’ve learned. Achievement

When you learn a poem by heart, it becomes part of you; anytime, anywhere, you can breathe it into being again. Children tell us about ‘my’ poem; our judges praise how well they have ‘owned’ the poem. If the poems we offer for learning are diverse and inclusive, this ownership offers a powerful form of participation in cultural life. TogethernessThe poems we learn when we’re young stay with us for the rest of our lives. They become embedded in our thinking, and when we bring them to mind, or to our lips, they remind us who we are as people, and the things we believe in. We call it learning by heart, and I think such learning can only make our hearts bigger and stronger.” Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate Gyles Brandreth has, for many years, been familiar with the notion that learning something new every day is a sure-fire way of sustaining mental well-being. He's also got a hunch that if that new 'thing' is in verse form there are a raft of other positives to be had from the process of learning it heart. In this programme he garners advice on how it should best be done, what benefits it genuinely brings and what joys are to be had 'in vacant or in pensive mood' from the flow and facility of poetic verse recollected in tranquillity. Julie Blake, co-director of Poetry By Heart, said: “In the last couple of years many teachers have asked us if we could develop some resources for younger children and we are delighted to have done that now. This heart-breaking piece is about how a lady breaks up with the speaker. Their relationship has ended abruptly or quite humorously. In this poem, Bukowski describes how the lady toys with his heart. One day, she suddenly comes by and ends everything for a silly reason: Many of his poems are about the natural world, with woods and trees featuring prominently in some of his most famous and widely anthologised poems (‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’, ‘Birches’, ‘Tree at My Window’). Elsewhere, he was fond of very short and pithy poetic statements: see ‘Fire and Ice’ and ‘But Outer Space’, for example.

The organisers of the Poetry By Heart competition, aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds, has published a set of 65 poems to support the teaching of poetry to younger children. A national poetry recital competition has launched a set of interactive resources for primary school children and their teachers.Like Housman, then, Frost favoured traditional verse forms but also a plain-spoken yet lyrical style. And although many people know the words in the final stanza of this poem, a good many people misinterpret them – and how well does anyone know the rest of ‘The Road Not Taken’? Why not commit this classic poem about opting for the road ‘less travelled’ to memory… The finale will be at Shakespeare’s Globe on Monday 26th June to an audience of invited guests, celebrating with poetry performances from the 2023 finalists, alongside guest readers featuring previous winners of Foyle Young Poets of the Year, and concluding with the awards to the Poetry by Heart winners. The list of finalists can be seen here. Memorably recited in the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral – the success of which led to a whole new generation discovering Auden’s poetry – this elegy actually started life as a parody of public obituaries, although its sentiment can be taken as sincere as well, which shows Auden’s genius. The four quatrains of this poem make it the ideal length to commit to memory.

Dr Julie Blake, FEA, FRSL(Hon), co-directs Poetry By Heart, the national poetry speaking competition for schools. She researches and writes about the history of poetry for children, creates digital and print anthologies of poems for children and young people, teaches poetry pedagogy and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry in the school English curriculum. Love and the Gentle Heart’is a sonnet with an irregular rhyme scheme. This poem reveals the nature of love and heart. In the first two quatrains of this piece, Dante describes how love and heart are the same at the same time two distinct things. Whereas the concluding section talks about how virtue wins a woman’s heart and her love. Let’s have a look at the last few lines from Dante’s sonnet. Housman (1859-1936) may not have revolutionised poetry in the way that some of the other names on this list did, but of all the poets included here, he is perhaps the one whose work most easily lends itself to being learned by heart. His fondness for regular rhyme schemes and verse forms, his plain and direct use of language, and his ability to articulate deeply felt sentiments in affecting and moving verse, all make Housman a join to learn, and carry around, ‘by heart’. The competition is created by The Full English and supported by the Department of Education with a consortium of partners including The Poetry Society, Homerton College, the University of Cambridge, The Poetry Archive, Stephen Spender Trust, The English Association, National Poetry Day, CLPE, Shakespeare’s Globe, OED and NATE. No one can learn a poem by heart for you. You have to create your own relationship with the poem, discover what memory tactics work best for you, and keep going when it seems too difficult. More managed curriculum activities don’t always have this scope and teachers are often delighted by the gains in learning independence. LanguagePoetry by Heart is a national poetry speaking competition for schools in England. It is open to young people in Key Stages 2-5. Pupils choose a poem, learn it by heart, and perform it.