Once again, Somerville House students performed extremely well in this year’s Literary Awards, sponsored by the English Teachers Association of Queensland, the Queensland Independent Education Union, Penguin/Random House and James Cook University.
Our winners are:
Isabella O (Year 12) – First Place, Non-Fiction Prose
Harriet B (Year 12) – Second Place, Non-Fiction Prose
Abby M (Year 12) – Highly Commended, Non-Fiction Prose
Hannah O (Year 9) – First Place, Poetry, Years 9-10 Section.
These students were presented their awards at an evening ceremony at the Queensland Multicultural Centre on 12 October.
In his closing address, IEUA-QNT Branch Secretary, Mr Terry Burke, commended the achievements of Somerville House students over many decades of participation in this competition. He paid tribute to the intellectual culture which must flourish for our students to produce writing of such a consistently exceptional standard.
Our Year 12 winners were praised for their feature articles by Dr Stephen Torre, Adjunct Professor within the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University. Of Isabella’s article, ‘Youth-Speak and the Evolution of Language’, he noted that ‘rather than lampooning youth speak, [she] finds the value in it, in terms of youth identity formation and communication, and in terms of invigorating the English language’. He lauded Isabella’s ‘judicious and restrained use of sources’ and her ‘intelligent, subtle use of Orwell’.
Harriet was congratulated for her ‘provocative and hard-hitting look at “the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it” in her article, ‘Ads R Us or R Ads Us?’. In ‘The Devil You Know, Abby presented a ‘compelling’ case for ‘the consciousness-numbing effects of social media language’.
Hannah, who also won First Prize in last year’s competition, mesmerised the audience with her reading of her poem, ‘Ghost Song/Ghost Dance’.
Congratulations to these students on their incredible achievements.