World Poetry Day Competition 2025
Enter for a chance to win a trip to Seamus Heaney HomePlace Exhibition for your school!
Theme: Springtime
Taking inspiration from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Death of A Naturalist,’ where he explores the wonder of tadpoles becoming frogs through the eyes of a child, students should write a poem about springtime. This can explore the change in weather, plants and trees, the new life that comes from animals being born or any other aspect of spring that students enjoy.
Literary Techniques/devices
Students are encouraged to use literary devices such as rhyme, alliteration or onomatopoeia although this isn’t necessary to win the competition. Teachers could use this opportunity to teach one literary device and encourage students to use it within their poem.
For example, by studying Death of a Naturalist an example of alliteration could be pulled out of the poem – ‘I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied specks’
Onomatopoeia is explored using words like ‘slap’ and ‘plop’
Length and Structure of Poem
Students should aim to write a poem which has some depth although they will not be penalised on length. We would suggest no longer than one A4 page. The poem can take any form such as a Haiku, Acrostic Poem or even a sonnet. Death of A Naturalist uses ‘enjambment’ where lines are continued without full stops. Teachers could use this opportunity to teach the different types of poems.
Links to Curriculum:
Pupils should be enabled to:
- write for a variety of purposes and audiences, selecting, planning and using appropriate style and form.
- experiment with rhymes, rhythms, verse structure and all kinds of word play and dialect.
- express thoughts, feelings and opinions in imaginative and factual writing, for example, compose a poem about their feelings on a special occasion.
Who Can Enter:
This competition is open to P6 and P7 students.
How to Enter:
Teachers should send their students entries in PDF format to seamusheaneyhome@midulstercouncil.org by March 7th so that we can announce our winner on the 21st of March in time for World Poetry Day.
The Prize:
The winning student will have the opportunity to visit Seamus Heaney HomePlace and have a free tour of our exhibition space with their class on a date of their choice in 2025.
Transport not included.
Death of A Naturalist
By Seamus Heaney
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst, into nimble
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
