Two classes from our school came in the top 10 finalists out of 72 entries for the ‘Alphabet Poets’ poetry competition organised by the Greek Embassy in London.
On Saturday 25th March, Greece celebrated 202 years of independence and on this day three staff and one student from our school were fortunate enough to attend the event hosted by the Greek Ambassador, Mr. Tsaousis where the top three winning poems were announced.
The brief of the competition was to create a poem in English using words derived from the Greek language. Our first poem was called ‘An angel from another planet’ and was written by students of the Bridge Class, Andrew Migchels, Theodoros Makry and Artemis Georgiou, supported by their teacher, Ms. Christina Armoni. The second poem was written by Ms. Evangelia Bakola’s Year 5 class, Joanna Michael, Annabel Paphitis and Florendia Morby. It was called, ‘An echo from Cyprus’.
During the event, the top ten poems were presented and performed by the students in front of the Greek Ambassador Mr. Ioannis Tsaousis, Greek and Cypriot Consuls Ms. Goula and Ms. Odysseus, Mrs Maria Loi (Head of Cyprus Educational Mission- KEA), Ms Ismini Hadjiyianni-Gkika (Co-ordinator of Central Educational Council of the Archdiocese -KES) as well as numerous officials from the Greek Embassy and the Cypriot High Commission. All the poems and performances were truly inspiring, and of a high standard. The Ambassador and his team, however, chose the top three that stood out most to win the competition and this included, ‘An echo from Cyprus’ written by Year 5 at the Greek school of Apostolos Andreas in Birmingham.
Each winner won a fantastic prize of an airline ticket to Athens from Aegean airways, but more than that they won the honour, the pride and the education of representing themselves and their schools creatively using their identity, language and culture.
A huge congratulations to our Year 5 winners and of course to our top ten finalists, Bridge class, who did us equally proud.
An echo from Cyprus – Winning poem
