Kudos to King’s Ely Sixth Form students, Mara Pintece and Eliza Spooner, for their sterling efforts in this year’s Cambridge Classical Association Reading Competition.
Mara and Eliza, who are both in Year 12 and studying A-Level Latin, entered the ‘Senior Verse’ category of the competition, which was held at the Cambridge University Faculty of Classics.
The duo had to prepare and perform a passage, in its original language, from ‘The Metamorphoses’ – a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet, Ovid.
Students from across the region entered the competition and they were judged on their pronunciation, their scansion, and how well they performed and reflected the content of the poem. Eliza and Mara performed with confidence and conviction, beautifully reciting their set passage of verse, and bringing to life the original Latin language.
Elisabeth Tyrrell, our Head of Classics, said: “Mara and Eliza were such a credit to themselves and to King’s. A huge congratulations must go to Mara, who was awarded a ‘Highly Commended’ for her performance. Thank you to Teacher of Classics, Dr Knox, who helped to prepare Mara and Eliza for the competition.”
As many of you will remember, earlier this month Eliza was announced a joint winner in this year’s Stephen Spender Prize – a prestigious poetry and translation competition, organised by The Stephen Spender Trust. Eliza achieved this with her excellent translation of the Latin poem, ‘Catullus 4’, written by the celebrated Roman poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus.
Fantastic achievements girls, well done!