High School Poetry Out Loud State Championship March Madness
It’s a competition as fierce as any basketball game. It’s a March Madness of words and ideas. On Saturday, 32 high school students will compete in the Poetry Out Loud Michigan Championship. Each competitor has honed his or her presentation skills and gone deep into the meaning of three distinctly different poems to win their school championship.
Poetry Out Loud is sponsored by the Michigan Humanities Council, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Students choose three poems to memorize and understand from a list of hundreds of poems by noted bards of the past and present-day poets. They then perfect their recitation skills to convey each poem’s tone and meaning. The poems range from the nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” to the moody meditation of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”
It’s all on the line Saturday when they face off at the Fairchild Theatre on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing. Competition begins at 9 a.m. and continues throughout the day.
In the end, one champion will emerge to claim a $200 prize and an all-expenses paid trip to compete in the national finals, April 27-29, in Washington, D.C., where they have an opportunity win a $20,000 scholarship.
But even before the competition begins, the students will have grown in self-confidence and gained a deeper understanding of language and ideas.
“Students surprise themselves! Students surprise me!” said Nick Mourning, a teacher at Holt High School. “There is nothing more exciting and thrilling than the shy, quiet student who steps up to the audience with a booming voice for his recitation or the class clown brought to tragedy and tears when performing Plath or Shakespeare. If a student really takes the time to learn the poem, understand the story, the reaction is a bold one – the noticeable reception from his or her classmates that we ‘get’ the journey our speaker has taken us through. This I believe makes my students the most excited.”
Last year’s winner, Lauren Treiber, was a senior at Forest Hills Central High School in Grand Rapids, when she discovered the power of poetry.
“What I love about the program is that it is presenting something very powerful yet concurrently fragile and gives it over to students,” Treiber said. “Poetry, then, is made to be more than print on a page or an assignment for class; it is handed to a person (a teenager, no less!). And when that person can perceive the words, ‘Here, this is for you,’ beautiful things happen.”
Treiber’s recitation of Rodney Jones’ “Mortal Sorrow” had a deep impact on the judges and on her.
“I went from almost instinctual to melancholy observations to absolute bereavement (sort of a strange progression) … it’s difficult for me not to cry at that poem anymore. It means that much to me now,” said Treiber, now a student at Goshen College.
For most students Poetry Out Loud is the first time they are exposed to poetry. Forest Hills’ teacher Sarah Scobell says the process of discovering poetry is one of the major benefits of the program.
“I actually think one of the best parts of the process, in terms of increasing poetry appreciation, is simply the search through the poems on the POL website that students go through while looking for a piece to recite,” Scobell said. “The process becomes addictive as kids scour the site and read scores of poems to determine which ones have meaning for them in terms of style, connection, theme.”
Mourning said the value in Poetry Out Loud comes when a student finally takes ownership of a poem.
“Competing and participating in POL, similar to other creative arts such as drama or music, sharpens not only our students’ imaginations and unique innovative thinking skills but also helps to accentuate the right-brain, more logical disciplines such as math, science, and social studies,” Mourning said. “Poetry really is an amazing art as it encompasses all other arts, subject areas and disciplines both in its mode and its content. Poetry Out Loud requires not only a literary sense, a performance sense, but also a research and knowledge sense – to know more and want more.”
Davy Rothbart, author, filmmaker and editor/publisher of Found Magazine, will bring his unique perspective to this year’s event. Rothbart will give his presentation at 2:30 p.m., followed by the final round of competition. The event is free and open to the public throughout the day; on campus parking is free.
Students participating Saturday are:
Tiffany Lacey, Coopersville, Vassar Pioneer Work and Learn Center
Christopher Doig, Houghton, Houghton High School
Quishanna Coleman, Detroit, Martin Luther King High School
Stephanie Mautz, Detroit, Franklin Road Christian School
Aditya Rengaswamy, Troy, Avondale High School
Crystal Zimmerman, Jension, Jenison Public High School
Sierra Petersen, Pentwater, Pentwater High School
Onaca Bennett, Mackinac Island, Mackinac Island Public School
Zachary Anzivino, Grand Rapids, Catholic Central High School
Jenelle Jones, Holt, Holt High School
Josef Fielder, Oak Park, Bradford Academy High School
Teghan Oswald, Boyne Falls, Boyne Falls Public School
Adrienne Johnson, Saline, Saline High School
Harron Atkins, Detroit, Cass Technical High School
Connor Gibney, Northville, Detroit Catholic Central High School
Lindsay Wellman, Portage, Portage Northern High School
Penelope Orsargos, Wyandotte, Riverview Community High School
Alysa Kilpela, South Range, Jeffers High School
Cameron McCargar, Midland, Calvary Baptist Academy
Kelly Stec, Wyandotte, Roosevelt High School
Francesca Lamarre, Detroit, Henry Ford Academy: School for Creative Studies
Carley Van Neuren, Grand Rapids, Wellspring Preparatory High School
Brittni Eller, Wyoming, Grand River Preparatory High School
Grant Walters, Kalamazoo, Portage Central High School
Randy Laundré, Mancelona, Alba Public School
Karl Schlicker, Dansville, Dansville High School
Shereen Baig, Carman-Ainsworth High School, Flint
Michael Ronan, Grand Rapids, The Leelanau School
Sarah Wallace, Linden, Hartland High School
Rishard Hawk, Flint, Madison Academy High School
Evie Atwater, Grand Rapids, Forest Hills Central High School
Anna Dowsett, Petoskey, Petoskey High School
