After an introduction by Assistant Superintendent Mr. Michael Novak and two rounds of reciting poetry, senior Kathleen Darling won Lakeland Regional High School’s 8th annual Poetry Out Loud school level competition on Thursday, January 16, 2020. She will now be moving on to compete in the region level competition next month at Bergen Community College.

The reciters were scored by a panel of judges to determine who had the highest score, placing them as the winner of the event. 

At the end of the first round, everyone’s individual score was announced. Once the second round had concluded, it was a suspenseful wait for the total scores to be calculated. This wait was made easier by Mr. Novak, who jokingly recited “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. Afterward, the total scores of the event and the top three places were named. Junior Kristie Andino claimed third place, with junior Nicole Kreider taking second place. Kathleen Darling won the event after an emotional recitation of Diameter, by Michelle Y. Burke in the first round, and The Conqueror Worm, by Edgar Allan Poe in the second round. 

The performance judge panel consisted of English teacher Mrs. Caitlin Vauter, English teacher Mrs. Jamie Cawley, and French teacher Dr. Kinga Galica, who were all testing performances for factors such as pronunciation, stage presence, rhythm, and emotion. World Language teacher Ms. Charlene Ott was the accuracy judge for the competition. She had a copy of each poem with her, and she read along as the poet recited to keep track of what words were missed or added in, which would affect the reciters’ scores. English teacher Mr. Eric White was the event’s prompter. Students who could not remember part of the poem or got stuck would be allowed to ask Mr. White to give them the next few words at the cost of a deduction of three points. 

After the poet had finished their recitation, the panel judges were given one minute to score the performer. The judges scored individually from each other and were not allowed to confer with one another. At the end of the one minute allotted, scores were passed on to history teacher Mr. Ron Etzkorn, who was the score tabulator. 

The competitors for the LRHS Poetry Out Loud event were those who had won during the class competitions held by English teacher Mr. Donn Reeves and Mr. White. The order in which the contestants went was created using a random number generator beforehand.

Poetry Out Loud, which was started in 2006, is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation, publishers of Poetry Magazine. The first level of the competition is classroom, and the winners of the classroom competition then compete amongst the other classroom winners of their school. From there, the winner of the school level moves on to compete at the region level, and the region level winner will move on to the NJ state level in March. The winner of the state level goes on to compete at the national level in Washington D.C. come April for the prize of $20,000 in cash.

The school level competition at LRHS consisted of two rounds in which each competitor recited a poem they had picked from the Poetry Out Loud online anthology and memorized. The poem recited during the first round had to be under 25 words, and the poem for the second round had to be a poem that was written before the 20th century. 

The LRHS community also recognizes and thanks Mr. White for running this competition year after year.