York Suburban Senior High School held its annual Poetry Out Loud competition in the auditorium on Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2014. Senior Carsyn Smith took first place in the school-wide competition. Senior Jensica Isminger earned the runner up award in the school wide competition.
Poetry Out Loud is a contest that is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation in order to help students in the United States learn about poetry. The contest also teaches students valuable skills including public speaking, self-confidence, and recitation.
The contest begins in classrooms of high schools. Participants choose a poem from a collection on the Poetry Out Loud website http://www.poetryoutloud.org/ that they find deep connection to and that they are interested in studying. Students practice and recite their poems on an assigned date. The classes vote on their favorite performer, who then moves on to the school-wide competition.
The school-wide competition occurs on a planned evening at the high school and is made up of the selected performers from the classroom-level competitions. Several judges are assigned to listen and take notes on the performers.
Smith competed in the classroom competition in Kelly Paraskevakos’s English Seminar class, and then moved on to be the winner of this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition. She recited the poem entitled For the Young who Want to written by Marge Piercy.
Smith explained that the poem was centered on creative writing and following your dreams, which she is quite passionate about. She enjoys reading and writing, especially poetry, so she exclaimed that the poem just “spoke to me”.
She was highly shocked when she was recognized as the winner of the school-wide competition. Smith explained that she had only participated in the Poetry Out Loud competition once before, and she had not even advanced to the school-wide competition.
A judge disclosed that she had been the winner because he felt the passion in her voice while she was reciting her chosen poem, and that she had great skill in pausing.
Smith moved on to the regional competition at the Majestic Theater located in Gettysburg. There she performed a total of three poems that she memorized. Unfortunately, Smith was not one of the finalists and did not advance to the next level of competition; however, several teachers and Carson herself are very proud of her advancement in the competition.