Poetry As Performance At NHS

By Martha Coville

The words they speak fill the lecture hall at the Newtown High School. In the poems they have written, they question, whisper, storm, rail, and curse. The juniors at Cari Strand’s and Lee Keylock’s poetry slam have claimed their voices.

A month later, Ms Strand’s and Mr Keylock’s students joined several other English classes in the lecture hall, this time for a formal recitation contest. The students’ delivery was careful and deliberate: short pause at this line ending; a longer stop at that comma; a voice pitched to ask a rhetorical question. They were relying on their performances to demonstrate their understanding of the poems.

Mr Keylock said that while he and Ms Strand have been coaching their students through the poetry slam for five years now, this is the first year NHS has participated in the national recitation contest called Poetry Out Loud. English teachers David Kimball, Jeanetta Miller, Michelle Toby, Mr Keylock, and Ms Strand launched the competition in their classrooms. Winners proceeded to a round of semifinals, and 12 semifinalists presented their poems to the public on Valentine’s Day.

On Monday, March 3, Ms Miller told The Bee, that the Poetry Out Loud winners Allyson Makuch and Quinlin Mitchell realized that they would not be able to represent NHS at the state level because they also have the leads in the NHS musical Hello Dolly. The play opens the same evening as the statewide competition in Hartford. Ms Miller said that runner up Maia Jacoby is “the new school champion.” She and Julie Kalt, both seniors, will represent NHS in Hartford on Thursday March 13.

An Emotional Performance

In a previous interview with The Bee, Mr Keylock said that he and Ms Strand run the poetry slam for their junior students because they believe it develops skills they should master as they near graduation. “Kids have used it to get real political,” he said. “It’s a great medium for teenagers to have a voice.”

Slam poets are the populists of the poetic world. They value poetry as an oral language, easily accessible to a community of listeners. At NHS, the slam rules required each student to write his or her own original poem, and perform it, preferably from memory, for the audience.

In the lecture hall on the day of the slam, Mr Keylock told his students, “You are proof alone that poetry lives and breaths and that it doesn’t belong to dead white men. It’s no easy task, getting up on stage on this stage. It’s not easy to slam a poem.”

His students clapped and shouted encouragement as their friends read their poems. The students’ performances were powerful and emotional. Behind the microphone hung a red banner. “Revolution one poet at a time,” it read, and in that atmosphere, it did not sound like hyperbole.

The students spoke, emotionally, to life in the high school fish bowl, and to more universal fears and anxieties. Asheley Leifels wished she could, “escape from this iPod prison.” Lauren Sudbey had apprehensions about the SATs. “It’s time for the test,” she said matter-of-factly, “and I’m not ready. Unfortunately, love isn’t gonna find me a job or pay my bills. This is the most important test of my life,” she said, “and I’m not ready.”

Stephan Gardner drew laughter when he began, saying, “Boy, do I hate that tree over there. It still holds its ground.” As the poem progressed, his petty envy turned to resolve. “Just like that tree over there, I’m standing my ground and holding my opinions,” he said.

Mitch Bloomberg’s poem was political: “Bush, Cheney, washed-out illiterates,” he said derisively. “No wrinkled old man could convince me that he’s part of my American Dream.”

After the performance, Mr Keylock said of his students, “They did all of this,” the writing, revising, and rehearsing, “in about three weeks.” For many, it was their first formal exposure to a poetry instruction. Poetry is included only in the senior curriculum at NHS.

‘Immersed In Language’

The audience at Poetry Out Loud, the recitation competition, was quieter. They did not yell or shout for their friends, but they listened to them with the same intensity. As the program began, one student said, “I don’t know why I’m nervous.” He was there to listen, not perform. “I’m nervous for them,” he said.

Poetry Out Loud is a national competition, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The website includes a bank of 400 English language poems, written by poets from Queen Elizabeth I to Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath.

The judging was formal. Guest judges, including Principal Chip Dumais, young adult fiction writer, and Newtown Bee employee and author Carol Sims, and Newtown resident Martin Blanco, a former stage director and producer at Yale University Repertoire Theater, scored students for the accuracy of their performance, their physical presence, their voice and articulation, on the appropriateness of their dramatization, the level of difficulty of the poem, the student’s overall understanding of the poem, and on their overall performance.

Senior Katie Condon said she was preparing to recite Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song.” “There were a lot of poems in the bank to choose from,” Katie said. “This is kind of fun. It’s the first time we’ve done something like this.”

Julie Kalt, who will advance to the statewide competition, said she chose “Fever 103” because “I really liked the language and how emotional the poem is. You kind of had to know the poems a little, to be able to choose one,” she said. “It’s exciting and I never really thought I could do something like this.”

And it was exciting to hear 17- and 18-year-olds speak in the language of mature poets. Mr Keylock said that the competition gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in someone else’s language. One student, Dan Berlingeri said, in the context of John Claire’s “I am,” that “I am the self consumer of my woes.” Another, Emma Canfield, performed Kim Addonizio’s “Scary Movie.” She said, “This is how it feels to loose it — / not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is / that helps you get up in the morning.” Laura Bittman recited Michael Ryan’s “Larkinesque”: “Reading in the paper … that … those perceived as most beautiful / are treated differently,” she said, “I think, they could have just asked me.”

Also enthused were the NHS English teachers who participated in the program. Mr Keylock was congratulated students on the level of their performance. “As a teacher,” he said, “I think Poetry Out Loud one of the most worthwhile of events, not surprisingly, because of the level of our students. They really stepped up, and it’s really a community of poetry.”