A national poetry recitation competition for teenagers aged 14 to 18 will be launched in schools and colleges next month, the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the former poet laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, announced today. The Poetry Archive’s competition, Poetry by Heart, will see thousands of pupils competing to become national champion at memorising and performing poems. Entrants will pick poems from an anthology of classic and contemporary poetry selected for the competition, including Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, Shelley’s Ozymandias, and Shakespeare’s clown song from Twelfth Night – “When that I was and a little tiny boy”. Details of the anthology will be announced next month.

The Department for Education is providing £500,000 to the Poetry Archive to develop and run the competition. Gove said: “To know a poem by heart is to own a great work of art forever.” Motion, pictured, who is co-founder and director of the Poetry Archive,  added: “Poetry by Heart is the best thing that's happened for poetry in schools for a long time: a way for pupils to have serious fun while they extend their reading, deepen their powers of appreciation, and memorise beautiful and intriguing poems which will enrich their lives for ever.”

The competition will be launched in schools in January, with the final at the National Portrait Gallery in April 2013.