On Monday, February 9, three Big Sky High School students went to the University of Montana to compete in the annual regional Poetry Out Loud competition.
Nearly a month later, two will travel to Helena this Saturday to participate in the state competition.
According to the Poetry Out Loud website, Poetry Out Loud is a dynamic poetry recitation competition and program for high school students around the country, designed to improve public speaking skills. Each state holds school wide competitions, and takes the winners of those competitions who then go to regionals, then state, then nationals in Washington D.C.
Big Sky’s Samantha Symington, a senior, took second place at the regional competition, which featured more than a dozen competitors from the Missoula area high schools. Big Sky’s Aaron Miller, senior, took fourth place.
This is Symington’s first year doing Poetry Out Loud, and when asked about how it felt to place at regionals, she said, “I felt like the girl who won completely deserved it, I could tell that she had a pretty personal connection to her poems. She pushed me to change my poems to something that I related more to [for] state.”
Both Symington and Miller will go on to the state Poetry Out Loud competition in Helena on March 7, Symington as a competitor and Miller as an alternate.
To make it to the regional competition, students had to compete in a poetry recitation contest at their local high school. Big Sky’s competition took place on January 28, and Miller took first place, Symington took second, Laila Podlipny, a junior, took third, and Hannah Baskett, a senior, took fourth.
For regionals, competitors were expected to memorize two poems from the national Poetry Out Loud collection, whether they were the same or different from the school competition, and according to Symington, the regional competition was a lot more daunting than the school competition.
“I was so nervous, by the end of it, I actually thought my legs were gonna give out,” Symington said. “I remember repeating my poems over, and over, and over again. It’s really hard to be up there and remember all your lines exactly.”
Before contestants said their poems, they did a mic test before going into the first round of competitions. According to Symington, competitors can choose whatever order they want to read their poems in, but you usually want your best to be first.
Students are then called up by name in a random order, and have to say their poem’s name and the author before reciting their poem. They do that for two rounds, and then the judges decide the winner. Competitors are judged on five things: voice and articulation, presentation, physical presence, accuracy, and emotion.
At state, all the students who qualified from the regional competitions around Montana will drive up to Helena a day early, on March 6, with at least one family member. According to Monica Grable, an Art Education Director based in Hamilton who helps run Poetry Out Loud for Montana, students all get together and relax and have pizza and do slam poetry the night before the big state competition.
“It’s like an all expenses paid vacation!” Grable said, referring to the free hotel stay the state competitors get the night before state.
During a phone interview the last week of February, Grable said she is working hard to get everything prepared for state, and so are competitors like Symington.
“State is gonna have a lot more people there, and the competition is gonna be harder,” Symington stated.
Symington said she picked two new poems for the state competition, along with one of the poems she recited at the school competition and regionals, “Conscience,” to recite at state. She is hoping to go as far as she can at state, and hopefully be the first Big Sky student to win a state Poetry Out Loud competition.
“This is my first year, I really love poetry, and it’s helping me develop skills surrounding public speaking,” Symington said, “The more confident I am going up onto the stage, and I know I know everything, the better I do.”
