Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2012

Let me not to the writing of true poetry admit impediment

O maths assignment how delicate your pages, How graphic your functions! How strong your relations! Your questions are so taxing, Oh how I wish I could understand you, How I long to discover the meaning of your expressions! Elena Peden and Lilly Gibson-Dougall (11G) Being with you is like solving an equation, I’ve found the answer—simultaneous equations! I am dependent on you, As y is dependent on x. Karina Schotte, Laura Schotte and Amanda Wisenthal (11W)

This mangling of Shakespeare’s famous opening line is only admissible in the service of the second annual Valentine’s Day Love Poetry Competition. After the success of the inaugural event in 2011, the English Faculty happily hosted the competition again. Girls can enter any poem in any form on any permutation of love they can come up with, and they do so with alacrity. This year, poems ran the gamut of love objects including iPhones, SpongeBob, Atticus Finch, boy-bands, Charles Dickens, mysterious admirers, lost loves, and even—most surprisingly of all—the taxation system. The competition is designed to get girls writing verse, to add a cultural sidelight to the commercialised Valentine’s Day, to broaden the scope of poetry away from just English by encouraging entries in other languages (this year entries were received in German, French and Latin as well as English), and to have a little fun with language. This last point in particular seems to have been successful as many poems were co-authored by pairs or groups of girls, who no doubt enjoyed the creative collaboration. Two Year 8 entrants wrote as a note to their poem, ‘We are not expecting to win but we wanted to enter for fun. Please enjoy’. As with all good franchises, a third edition is in the offing for 2013, so girls should periodically pull out their black skivvies, distracted demeanours, and rhyming dictionaries to be part of it again. Mr Stephen Woods, Director of English

The William to my Kate, There's a reason we are here together, And that reason is fate. I know this is cheesy, These things always are, But I can just tell, That we will go far. Wing Ng (10B)

Above: Students having fun with Valentine’s Day festivities during lunch

Above: Valentine’s Day celebrations raising money for Care Australia

Above (left to right): Laura Perrin (12W), Tanvi Karnik (12R), Phoebe Tronc (12H), Mikaela Brusasco (12W) and Rosemarie Hanlon (12E)

15 Grammar Gazette Autumn 2012