Once again, Malden High School has successfully held their annual Poetry Out Loud period competitions. All of the competitors surely impressed both the audience and judges. In continuation with the MHS tradition, the competitions were held in the Jenkins Auditorium on January 6th and 7th, 2016, where students finally got the chance to say their poems that they had been practicing repeatedly over and over again.
After the intense and competitive competition during period 3, winner Carine Exume describes her memorization strategy, “ I kept breaking it down more and more until I knew exactly how I wanted to recite every word in each line of each stanza.” No matter how competitors felt the period before, when they stepped a foot on stage the anticipation and eagerness leading up to their poem was beyond nerve racking. Competitors had to leave everything behind as their names were called to recite their poems. Period 1 winner Jenna Vanella described she “couldn’t feel her legs then and after [she] read [her] poem” Other competitors shared their feelings leading up to their performance as well, Exume says that “ [her] heart dropped… [her] tongue and throat became extremely dry and before I had time to get water, [she] heard Mr. Walsh say ‘Welcome to Poetry Out Loud Period 3”.
After interviewing some of the winners from the period competitions, most were surprised with their success, and felt absolutely ecstatic. Period 5 winner Jenny Huynh says that “ [she] was shocked when [she] won because all the other competitors were so fantastic.” Jenna Vanella continued and said that she “didn’t even think [she] was going to win”. Obviously the competitors were being completely modest because their recitations all dominated the stage.
Most winners could not have done it without the continuous support and help of their English teachers, and classmates. Mr. Londino has the reputation of being one of most competitive teachers that contribute to the POL competitions. Vanella the winner of period 1 from Mr. Londino’s class stated that “[Mr. Londino] really helped me calm down before my recitation, and [he] gave me a lot of confidence that I would do good.” Ms. Nyman had more than one student of hers who won class competitions, and continued to help her students after school, Huynh says that “ [Ms. Nyman] helped critique my performance–telling me whether or not I was pronouncing words correctly”.
Ms. Nyman continued to inspire, Exume expresses, “I knew I was awful when I recited my poem to the class, but [Ms. Nyman] still managed to say ‘you’re going to do great, you’re going to beat everyone’. I thought she was crazy when she said that, but the only crazy thing in that room was how much confidence she had in me, when I had none at all”. Overall, the period competitions definitely left MHS curious to see what is in store for this year’s POL finals!
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