During the December season, most people focus on the holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. However, the Mepham Pirates have cherished an annual tradition— the Poetry Out Loud competition. For the past 16 years, Mepham has hosted this honorable event, in which students of all grades can participate. In this competition, students compete to the very end, in their verbal rendition of a poem of their choice.
The process by which students participate is quite simple. “Students can choose which poem they are going to be using,” says Ms. Maresca, the coordinator of this event. “Then students become selected to move on in the competition.”
Before the schoolwide Poetry Out Loud competition commences, students must first compete in their English class competition to narrow down the candidates. After selecting a poem, students must commit this poem to memory, where they will then recite the entire poem back to their class. The culmination of the classroom competition results in the winner moving onto the schoolwide competition.
The schoolwide competition seems daunting to many, but the benefits that all will reap at the end will soon be worth it for them
“I pushed myself to do it,” says senior, Fiona Zheng. “But then I decided to do it, and ended up in 3rd place!”
Not only are students given the opportunity to move onto regional Poetry out Loud competitions, some learn more than just the words on the page in front of them.
“I feel like there are a lot of things going on in the world, and I feel like it was time to really speak out about it” says 1st place recipient Danya Zaidi, junior.
All in all, the Poetry Out Loud competition teaches students how to speak publicly, how to understand the literary choices their poet implemented into the poem, and how to appreciate the history that came before them. Poetry Out Loud gives students an opportunity to share their voice, to share the ideas that they found. Overall, it was a great experience for both viewers and presenters alike to connect through poetry.
