MTOT Success – Media Team Report

Category: Achievement, Media Team, MFL, News, Students write

15 Jul 2022

Mother Tongue Other Tongue (MTOT) is a multilingual poetry competition which celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity through creative writing. We are elated to share the news that 2 students from our school have made it through to the first round of the Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition!

Daisy A in Year 12, Prishaa K in Year 7 and Zaynab K in Year 7 all participated in the competition. Sadly, Zaynab did not get through, however, Daisy and Prishaa both produced stunning entries which got them through to the next round! Congratulations Prisha and Daisy!

On the 14thof July, all 3 girls attended a celebration event at the Manchester Metropolitan University. They left halfway through the school day, took the tram down to the University, and finally arrived at their exciting destination!

First, all 3 girls took part in workshops led by many famous poets such as the renowned Valerie Bloom! Students were given an insight on a poet’s life and were asked to create their own poems based on the topic they were analysing. After this, it was time to head to the presentation room for the awards ceremony.

To start off the ceremony, Carol Anne Duffy (a very famous poet, whose most famous poem is called ‘Prayer’) started to read out some poems along with her fun musician friend John Sampson, who played many interesting instruments such as the Haidi, a very old Chinese horn which makes a wonderful sound!

Throughout the ceremony, many of the poets who lead the workshops shared some of their stories and read us some fantastic poems too! It was a very comfortable atmosphere with lots of happy people all around the room.

Finally, the time had come to collect the awards. As their names were being called out, all of the competitors stood up turn by turn, and soon came Prishaa and Daisy! We are all so proud of our 2 winners. Out of 1500 people, only 62 were chosen! And Daisy and Prishaa were part of those 62.

It was nearing the end of the day. Everybody collected their Certificates and their copies of this year’s Anthology. There is also now a fresh copy in the School Library so feel free to go and take a look!

Well done Prishaa and Daisy for your excellent achievements! Thank you MFL Department (especially Ms Ryan who took us on the trip) for this wonderful opportunity! We hope this success encourages more young writers to take part in the amazing competition! AGGS for the win!