Echoes: The Vir­tu­al Po­et­ry Chal­lenge is a chal­lenge, not a com­pe­ti­tion. The an­tic­i­pat­ed 12 se­lect­ed fi­nal­ists will crit­i­cal­ly as­sess and per­form great po­et­ic works rec­om­mend­ed in the CXC/CAPE syl­labi and the Eng­lish Lan­guage cur­ricu­lum.

They will make an echo of that craft, through rein­ter­pre­ta­tion, recita­tion or/and re­vi­sion; demon­strat­ing their riv­et­ing skills, as they analyse po­et­ry from seem­ing­ly ar­cha­ic po­ets such as: Wil­fred Owen, Sea­mus Heaney, Mark Mc Watt, Ger­ard Hop­kins, Mar­tin Carter, Lor­na Good­i­son and Ri­ta Dove.

This vo­cal de­liv­ery and their writ­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties will be ac­cen­tu­at­ed by es­sen­tial stag­ing con­ven­tions—cos­tum­ing, sound, light­ing, drama­ti­sa­tion, dance, dra­mat­ic en­trances and ex­its, props, back­drops­—which will en­able an amaz­ing ex­pe­ri­en­tial learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence to be un­fold­ed for all par­tic­i­pants and at­ten­dees (teach­ers and stu­dents na­tion­al­ly).

The reg­is­tra­tion for this chal­lenge cur­rent­ly ex­tends un­til Sep­tem­ber 30. There will be a Par­tic­i­pants Prepa­ra­tion One-day Work­shop where na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al po­ets and thes­pi­ans will share on top­ics in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the im­por­tance of sound, con­text, dic­tion etc to po­et­ry and its im­pact on the lis­ten­ers—as dra­ma is meant to be seen, po­et­ry is meant to be heard and prose is meant to be read!

This is the sec­ond edi­tion of Echoes, as the chal­lenge was con­duct­ed by Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions at the South­ern Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts, on Oc­to­ber 11, 2018. The win­ners sure­ly out­did them­selves in­tri­cate­ly weav­ing to­geth­er po­et­ry and dra­ma; flaw­less­ly and with cre­ative ge­nius.

Anyawa Adams of St Fran­cois Girls Col­lege was the win­ner of this chal­lenge, fol­low by Odun­m­baku So­morin in sec­ond place, and in third place Nao­mi Mes­si­ah, both of Bish­op Anstey and Trin­i­ty Col­lege East sixth form.

Through this ini­tia­tive by Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions, stu­dents will es­cape their vir­tu­al class­room walls of mo­not­o­ny and es­cape in­to the cityscape of po­et­ry ed­u­ca­tion.

The pro­duc­tion team’s de­sire is to make a dif­fer­ence in the ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence of stu­dents na­tion­wide.

They fa­cil­i­tate this by en­abling a trans­for­ma­tion of their at­ti­tude, mind­set and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the per­form­ing arts, Eng­lish Lan­guage and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture through demon­strat­ing the great­ness of the art­form.

Through this, they open doors to so­cial youth de­vel­op­ment, the­atri­cal/ed­u­ca­tion­al un­der­stand­ing and crit­i­cal think­ing.

Prizes will al­so be dis­trib­uted to the most sup­port­ive teacher, the school with the most team spir­it and the par­tic­i­pant with the most so­cial me­dia sup­port, among many oth­er prizes. There is over $15,000 in prizes to be won.

The project is al­so in­tend­ed to en­cour­age stu­dents dur­ing this dif­fi­cult pan­dem­ic sea­son. It gives them some­thing to look for­ward to and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent their school.

Thus far, Mil­waz Pro­duc­tions have had sup­port from recog­nis­able po­ets, from the po­et­ry lit­er­ary land­scape of T&T such as: Cir­cle of Po­ets TT, Nicholas Sosa, De­von Mus­grave, Der­ron Sandy, song­writer Samuel Selk­eridge, Jonathan “Shis­elon” Da Sil­va, Alexan­dra Stew­art, the Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam de­fend­ing cham­pi­on and many oth­ers. They have joined the team to help rev­o­lu­tionise the way stu­dents view po­et­ry and boost the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of that lit­er­ary facet.