Southeast student heads to D.C. for national poetry contest
Springfield’s Southeast High School junior Mariah Brooks claimed the title of Illinois statewide champion for the Poetry Out Loud competition last week.
It’s part of a national poetry recitation competition that creates a platform for high school students across the U.S. to use poetry as a form of artistic expression. Brooks will go to Washington, D.C., in May to compete at the national level.
On March 11, Brooks beat out 15 other high school students from around Illinois to earn a slot at the national Poetry Out Loud competition. The Hoogland Center for the Arts hosted the competition last week, accommodating the high school students, their parents and academic supporters from schools across Illinois.
Amber Price, a junior at Maine East High School, Park Ridge, finished behind Brooks, ultimately taking the title of runner-up.
The students recited poems from various poets, ranging from the sonnets of William Shakespeare, to classics of Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson and Carl Sandburg, leaving a lasting impression on the judges.
To set the tone for the evening, Ryan Devlin from Virginia High School and the third-place winner of the central Illinois regional competition, presented a poem titled A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, by John Donne.
In the first round, Mariah Brooks captured the audience’s attention with a poem titled Negative, by Kevin Young.
The first stanza reads, “Wake to find everything black what was white, all the vice versa – white maids on TV, black sitcoms that star white dwarfs cute as pearl buttons. Black Presidents, Black Houses.”
From the faces of the audience members, it was obvious that her reading of the poem evoked a level of insight that the audience was not expecting.
Price, the statewide runner-up, had a similar effect when she recited one of Maya Angelou’s most famous poems titled, Caged Bird. Price’s dramatization of the word “clipped” added flair to her presentation as well as demonstrated evidence that she understood the poem. Dramatic appropriateness and evidence of understanding are part of the criteria used by the judges when determining how they would score a contestant.
During the short recess between round one, Sheila Walk, program assistant for the Illinois Arts Council, told Illinois Times that all of the students are talented and insightful.
“All of the poems were quite varied and difficult to memorize,” Walk said. “The students are tackling these themes and figuring out how to comprehend them just as the poet wishes.”
All 16 contestants recited a different poem for the second round.
In the final round of the competition, the judges narrowed the competitors down to the top five contestants.
Brooks and Price were among the top five and stunned the judges with their recitation of their poems. Brooks took home the title of statewide champion after reciting a poem titled Let the Light Enter, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Brooks. “I love poetry.”
“In my eyes, they’re all winners,” said Sheila Walk of the Illinois Arts Council. “The students were the top performers in their class, at their school and at the regional level. They are representing their school well.”
Contact Brittany Hilderbrand at [email protected].
