Preserving Poetry, An Adventure in Expression
Preserving Poetry, An Adventure in Expression
Susan Rosenlof
Story by AbbyMcGuire
Poetry, a “dying” art, is still in style at Marian. From the sonnets to haikus, spoken word poetry isn’t fading, since competitions like Poetry Out Loud keep it alive. It is a national competition, so it not only unites students within their own states, but it brings students across state lines together to celebrate their common love of poetry.
Even if poetry doesn’t excite participants, the $20,000 award offered by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Poetry Foundation for first place surely will. This competition was promoted through emails, English teacher announcements and bulletin board posters, and took place on Jan. 22.
Performing poetry isn’t the same as blankly reading a passage in front of a class. It requires emotion, voice modulation, acting and audience engagement.
Poems were written to express deep emotion and various themes, so performing these poems adds an extra dimension to their impact. The Poetry Out Loud competition sees the importance of continuing poetry performance and allowing teens to express and explore their interest in poetry and acting.
Each year they provide students with an array of poetry material that they can choose from, and students create a theme for their performance. Students pick a poem and perform it in front of select teachers and staff at their school. If they win their school competition, they advance to the state competition. If they win the state competition, like senior Elizabeth Buescher did last year, they advance to nationals in Washington D.C. Buescher also earned the school $400 in poetry resources and a personal scholarship check as well as the trip to compete at the national level.
Due to her Poetry Out Loud experience, Buescher has some advice for students who are interested in the competition and explains why involvement is important.
“It gives you experience in an art field that isn’t very much expanded on in school, like I could probably count on two hands how many poems we’ve looked at throughout all four years at Marian,” Buescher said.
For budding artists and writers, poetry exposure is vital. The Poetry Out Loud website makes it easy to find poems to read, and you are required to pick one off of the site. Current juniors, sophomores and freshmen are encouraged to participate next year.
“I think it’s just a really good experience. If you get runner-up in school you can put it on your resume… It’s just a couple of teachers who aren’t going to judge you that hard…and the other girls are just as scared as you are…It’s scary at first, but you can get the hang of it. It’s one of the easier public speaking things you’ll do if you’re doing it at Marian because there’s just not that many people doing it,” Buescher said.
This year’s winner is Majie Ahna Winfrey '26, and she will be attending the state competition at Midland University on March 9, and will have to prepare a third poem in the meantime.
For students interested in other avenues of poetry performance, it is alive and thriving in the speech club.
The Nebraska Speech and Debate Association is filled with different events for students interested in public speaking, including a poetry event, where students can perform poetry of their choice, and they are allowed to compose their own pieces.
So, poetry is all around, as long as people know where to find it.