The Poetry Out Loud Finals took place in the Malden High School Auditorium on Wednesday, January 24th. The thirteen students who won the semi-finals competed with one another in the Finals and had to perform two poems. The first place winner was from the senior class, Alexa Murray. The second place winner was one our very own head of local News for the Blue & Gold Newspaper, Junior Rebeca Pereira. Sophomore Angelina Schoor received and third place.
The rubric criteria used in the class is the same one used for the POL contest. It comes from the rubric used in the National contest and students are scored by that from the two judges, Abbey Dick, the director of Humanities and Carol Keenan, the assistant superintendent. There is a total of eight points the students receive on accuracy. The host, English teacher lead Robin Doherty, signals to the person tabulating the scores, MHS English teacher Jennifer Clapp, on how many from the eight points the students earned. Since each student had to recite two poems, they received two performance scores from each judge along with an accuracy score. There is only one winner because the school can only send one student from this round of competition to the next round which is the State Semi-Final.
Clapp stated that she “loves Poetry Out Loud” and said “It’s one of [her] favorite things about the school year” and loves it as a “community building exercise because everybody has to participate in some way and that lets everyone understand what the students on stage are experiencing.” When asked why she thinks students aren’t able to judge the student poetry out loud finals, Clapp said it’s partly because “it has a judging system that isn’t just a Malden High School thing, it’s a National thing and so it has its own sort of rules and restrictions” but that she wishes students could be apart of the judging process and that it could be something to start thinking about for the future.
Second place winner, Rebeca Pereira says she has loved poetry since eighth grade because her eighth grade teacher “really emphasized the power of poetry and [she] thinks that was really beneficial to [her].” She had even more interest at the start of freshman year and she has english teacher, Maggie Giberson to thank for that and for “spiking [her] interest in Poetry Out Loud.” Pereira has never made it to the state semi-finals but has made it to the finals freshman year, as well as this year. The two poems she recited in the Finals this year was
“Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” by Natalie Diaz and “Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before” by Aphra Behn. Pereira said she has “terrible stage fright” but that “once you’re actually up there reciting the poem itself, if you practiced, it’ll come naturally.”
Freshman, Iloni Taylor made it past the semi-finals and described her experience as “enjoyable.” Taylor said that she felt “nervous because all the attention was on [her], as well as the other contestants on stage” and mentioned that “everytime [she] went up to the mic, [her] heart started racing but as [she] read her poem(s), [she] was able to relax a little and ease into it.” In the finals, Taylor recited the poem “Sanctuary” by Jean Valentine and “Ode on Solitude” by Alexander Pope. Taylor also mentioned that she was not expecting to move on from the semi-finals “in all seriousness, regardless of [her] being a freshman.”
Taylor said that in her mind she thought “If [she] doesn’t win, it’s whatever. At least [she] tried [her] best,” but to her surprise she heard Ms.Doherty call her name and thought it was an honest mistake. She didn’t know what to think, but hearing her friends in the audience and other students cheer her on made her feel happy inside and out. She also said that even though she didn’t move on to the state finals, “[she] still made it that far, and [she’s] proud of herself.”
Not only is there a student Poetry Out Loud competition but there is also a teacher contest judge by student semi-finalists competitors for that round. This year, Damian Aufiero, Evan Mauser, Shamus Brady, and Thomas Snarsky all competed in the teacher POL contest. Snarsky received first place with the recitation of the poem “Someday I Will Join a Band and I Will Feel Pretty Much the Same" by Ben Mirov.
Math teacher, Thomas Snarsky participated in POL for three years beginning with when he was first a student teacher. He won his first year reciting “A Poem” by Ariana Reines, performed last year with “Wet Casements” by John Ashbery and won again this year. Snarsky said he really likes that POL is a place for students to have to memorize poetry because “a poem feels a lot different when you memorize it then when you just read it...especially because most of the time with social media and stuff things go by so fast then you forget [them] right away.” He said that being on stage makes him nervous because “it’s not like teaching where you know the stuff because [he] never knows if he really memorized it until [he’s] doing it in front of people.”
Malden High looks forward to hearing news from the Semi-Finals Competition that takes place on March 3rd, 2018
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that “Someday I Will Join a Band and I Will Feel Pretty Much the Same" was written by Ben Meyerhoff.
