WASHINGTON — Shanley High School Junior Julia Johnson recited three poems to compete for the $20,000 prize at this year’s national Poetry Out Loud competition in Washington.
Johnson, representing North Dakota, competed against 52 other high school students from all 50 states plus Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.
In Tuesday’s regional semifinals of the oral poetry contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, Johnson competed against 16 other students. Of those, eight were selected to recite a third poem, vying for the three spots in the finals, set for Wednesday night at the Lisner Auditorium in Washington.
Johnson was selected for a third reading, but did not advance to the finals.
“They actually said my name!” said Johnson, grinning. “The joy that I felt was insurmountable. The goal was to read that third poem and I’m so happy to be chosen in the top eight.”
Poetry Out Loud is an oral poetry competition put on by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Students select and recite poems from an anthology that ranges from Shakespeare to Billy Collins. Johnson read from Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg and Linda Gregg.
“The original idea was to reintroduce poetry to the classroom that was dynamic, where students could feel engaged and learn to inhabit a poem,” said Eleanor Billington, the Poetry Out Loud program director at the National Endowment for the Arts. “It’s important for students to be able to see themselves in a poem.”
The national competition is a culmination of a year’s worth of curriculum and training. The program starts in English classrooms across the country and encourages students to have an appreciation for, and a connection with, poetry.
This year, 2,400 students from 15 North Dakota schools participated in the Poetry Out Loud program, according to the North Dakota Council on the Arts. Johnson was tapped to represent the state.
“The program brings in kids with all different interests and different sized schools,” said Rebecca Engelman, arts and education director for North Dakota Council on the Arts. “It teaches students how to have composure and grace in front of a group.”
Johnson started with the Poetry Out Loud curriculum freshman year, and since then has become much more confident in public speaking.
Johnson said memorization is the easy part of the process. Understanding the poem and learning to speak the poem with your own voice is the challenging part, she said.
“You can sit and read a poem, but it changes the experience when you synthesize the poem, memorize it and speak it back,” said Engelman. “It creates more meaning for the student and for the audience.”
In the national competition, students are judged on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, evidence of understanding, accuracy and overall performance.
“I know poetry is kind of shoved to the back burner, especially in this day in age,” said Johnson. “I just hope that people discover that there is so much in poetry.”
Published in conjunction with 