Students Showcase Talent at Lakeland’s Seventh Annual Poetry Out Loud Competition
Lakeland’s Poetry Out Loud participants
James Gates Percival once said, “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” Lakeland Regional High School held its seventh annual Poetry Out Loud competition on January 9, 2019 .
Poetry Out Loud is a national competition in which high school students perform recitations of famous poetry for an audience. Participants selected poems from the official Poetry Out Loud anthology of over 900 poems and performed them at the classroom level. Winners of their respective classes moved on to the school competition where students, parents, and teachers gathered in the lecture hall to hear these bright talents perform.
Lakeland’s 2019 Poetry Out Loud winner – senior Shayna Rives
Students were graded on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, evidence of understanding, and overall performance. After each performer read their two selected poems, the judges scores were tallied, and the winner was revealed to be senior Shayna Rives. Rives recited “Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy” by Thomas Lux and “Here” by Joshua Mehigan. Rives will be moving on to the regional competition in February where she will compete against students from other local school districts.
“Shayna Rives demonstrated a consistency of performance. She delivered both poems with a cool confidence and a wonderful sense of their meaning. The words were performed so fluidly, with such subtlety in tone, that it was readily apparent the poems had become part of her psyche. She understood them inside and out,” said Mr. Eric White, Lakeland’s 2018-19 Teacher of the Year and the organizer of this event. He continued, “The competitors did an amazing job this year. I was stunned by Shane Finn’s performance of ‘Acquainted with the Night’ by Robert Frost, especially because he performed that poem with only a week’s notice and yet did so with a masterful understanding of pacing.”
It is evident that the students put an enormous amount of time and energy into their recitations. Months of hard work are apparent in their performances. When asked why she participates as a performance judge in the competition every year, Mrs. Melissa Roush, English teacher, said, “I enjoy listening to poetry and love seeing how students connect with certain works and then bring those works to life. Further, I remember having to memorize and recite both poetry and Shakespeare when I was in high school, so I know how difficult of a skill it is. I love watching students challenge themselves and conquer tough tasks.”
Student participants included seniors Shane Finn, Hailey Imbasciani, Shayna Rives, and Jake Van Dine; junior Ben Rothlaf; sophomores Kristie Andino and Nicole Krieder; and freshmen Matthew Bernardon and Aidan Slaman. Two of the competitors, Kreider and Andino, entered the competition completely voluntarily. Their English classes didn’t run the competition, so they pursued it on their own.
When asked to sum up the value of the Poetry Out Loud competition, Mr. White told the Lancer Ledger, “The simple act of memorizing a poem forces one to get into the nooks and crannies of a poem–to really dig into its bones–in order to understand the words that one is memorizing. That in and of itself is valuable. In English class we often don’t have the time to sit with a single poem for many weeks. Poetry Out Loud slows down our modern-day voracity for more more more and allows a poem to settle in for a deep soak. That’s an incredible luxury in our busy lives, and it’s a luxury that I would argue is beneficial to literature appreciation as a whole.”
Each year, the Lakeland community is bestowed the honor of seeing its students sparkle on this platform. This year was no exception. Congratulations to all participants.
