Newtown High School Students Recite ‘Poetry Out Loud’

By Eliza Hallabeck

Only one student could move on from the final round of the Poetry Out Loud competition at Newtown High School on Monday, February 9, but roughly 400 students in English courses at Newtown High School took their chances in this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition over a course of two weeks.

It all started within the classrooms as students choose poems to read from the Poetry Out Loud’s website. Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation contest. Within the classrooms, students recited poetry for their teacher, class, and visiting teachers, who acted as judges.

Roughly two students moved on to the semifinal round from each classroom, and those 43 students recited their poetry Thursday, February 5. For four class periods the semifinalists sat in the lecture hall and waited their turn to perform before six judges and peers as English classes rotated into the Lecture Hall for their class period.

All of the English teachers at the high school were invited to have their students participate in this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition. Last year only students in their junior and senior years competed in Poetry Out Loud, and this year it grew to include students from all grades.

“There has to be only one winner,” Lee Keylock, who coordinated the Poetry Out Loud competition, said during the final round of the competition.

For the semifinals the students had one poem to share, and for the competition’s final round the students had to recite two from memory. There were five judges for the semifinal round, and six judges and one accuracy judge for the final round. Max Baudisch, Laura Bittman, Sonia Brand-Fisher, Hannah DeFlumeri, Zoe Destories, Zach Dlouhy, Biota Hung, Allyson Makuch, Katie McMorran, Quinlan Mitchell, Andrew Nichols, and Jess Thomas were the 12 students who moved on to recite their prepared poetry on Monday night.

From Walt Whitman to Kim Addonizio, the written words of renowned poets echoed in the Lecture Hall as the 12 students each performed poetry chosen from the Poetry Out Loud website.

The students recited their poetry in two rounds for the final night and each student had prepared two poems. For the first round the students recited the poems they had been reciting for the entire competition, and for the second round students recited poetry they had only been practicing since passing on from the semifinals.

There was a large range of emotions displayed by the participants on Monday, but only when reciting their poetry. From anger, to love, to the distain for humans in Max Baudisch’s recitation of “Discrimination” written by Kenneth Rexroth, the audience responded enthusiastically upon completion of each poem.

“There’s such a minute spread across all the points,” said Mr Keylock to the students as he was about to announce the four top-scoring students and the winner of this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition.

Jess Thomas came in fourth place, Zoe Destories came in third, Quinlan Mitchell came in second, and Allyson Makuch came in first. Allyson will be moving on to the state level of the competition as the representative from NHS. When asked how she decides what emotion to portray with a poem Allyson said, “It’s just feeling what you would feel and showing that.”

Allyson said she does a lot of acting, and that helped her in reciting the poetry.