Poetry Out Loud

Written by Bianca Lombo and Analiz Castellanos

VHHS Poetry Out Loud

What Poetry Out Loud Is, and How It Works

Poetry Out Loud is a national competition designed to help high school students connect with poetry through its performance. Started in 2005 by the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation, which aimed to support schools in having a poetry program. By performing poetry aloud, the performer has a deeper connection to their emotions and the connotation the words have. The competition starts at the school level, where participants choose their poem from a large, pre-approved list that features a variety of poems from different poets, ranging from classical poems to contemporary ones. The winner of the school competitions is followed by regional contests, where top students from different areas compete against each other. At regional competitions, they have to demonstrate their skills to perform and recite the poems that they are performing. After regionals, 2 to 6 contestants move up to states, where each state picks a winner to represent them at the national level. The final stage is the Poetry Out Loud Nationals. Held in Washington, D.C., where contestants from all over the states have the opportunity to perform on stage their poems, which they've been working on for more than four months. While Poetry Out Loud provides a national structure for students to perform poetry, much of the program’s impact is made possible long before anyone steps on stage. 

Behind the Scenes: The Work That Happens Before the Mic

Mrs. Robinson, the Poetry Out Loud coordinator at our school, so her view of the competition includes both long-term student development and event logistics. When talking about what keeps her committed to the program, she framed her answer around transformation, not routine. Rather than focusing on the poems themselves, Mrs. Robinson directed attention to what happens to the students performing them. “The most rewarding part each year is witnessing students’ growth and support of each other as they master potentially intimidating elements—poetry and performance,” she explained, describing confidence as something the event builds. Her comments underscored a consistent pattern—students joining the competition nervously but returning excited, persuasive of their peers, and supportive of each other’s progress. 

Mrs. Robinson explained that the role of a coordinator involves heavy preparation before the first rehearsal begins. Setting the stage for that explanation, she noted that the work is deliberate and interconnected. Her planning includes registering the school for the national competition led by the National Endowment for the Arts, booking the auditorium, establishing deadlines with the regional director, scheduling school meetings and rehearsals, organizing individual and group coaching, creating posters and announcements on VNN, preparing the judges’ scoring sheets, writing the emcee’s script, securing prizes, and managing student volunteers.  She also expressed direct gratitude for the support she received while managing the event. She thanked Mrs. Spradlin for her ongoing impact as both a student coach and the school’s emcee for the past two years. She also acknowledged Ben Davis for creating a spreadsheet that tallied competition scores this year, noting it as an “immense time saver.” Mrs. Robinson explained that printing poem copies and scoring sheets remains the most time-intensive part of preparation. Reinforcing that the coordination work focuses on building the systems that allow every performance to land clearly and run smoothly. 

The judging panel is intentionally curated, not randomly drawn. As Mrs. Robinson explained in her responses, she looks for judges who already understand the performance or evaluation process—educators with experience in reading, poetry, scoring, or performing. Judges have included faculty members such as Mrs. Ashley Corona, Ms. Candy Hacker, Ms. Linda Rainer, Mrs. Kira Aaron, Mrs. Jennifer Dalton, Mr. Ben Davis, Mrs. Erin Deerman, Mr. Michael Sinnott, Mr. Brad Waguespack, Mrs. Aisha Ward, and Mr. Stanley Woodall. 

Her final point connected clearly back to audience reception. She credited the school’s jazz musicians, including Lance Wilkerson, Alex Martin, and Carson Cameron, for performing live interludes between poems, adding energy in a way that supported pacing, variety, and engagement. The jazz worked because it served a functional role, allowing each poem to land distinctly instead of blending into the next.  With the foundation and event framework set, poem selection becomes the next defining layer of the competition, shaped by each student’s intent and interpretation. 

Different Paths to the Same Goal: Owning the Poem

The school competition required students to recite two poems from the national anthology, perform original poetry, or both. The rules shape the structure, but the performer shapes the interpretation. Namira Rubaiyath, the National Anthology and Original competition winner, said she selected every poem with one defining theme in mind. “I wanted all my poems to be about women,” she explained. The anthology poems that aligned with her vision were “Militants to Certain Other Women” by Katherine Rolstone Fisher and “The Old Suffragist” by Margaret Widdemer. In her words, both pieces “felt the most fitting to what I wanted to say.” Her strategy was alignment over substitution, choosing poems that amplified her message rather than speaking for her. Namira describes her enthusiasm for the performance side of the competition as rooted in independence, saying original poetry “gave me the agency to perform how I interpreted the poem and not to some other, premade standard.” For her, that excitement came from interpretive freedom.  When reflecting on what she hoped the audience would take away from her poems, Namira said, “I don’t know, actually; performing was less for the audience and more for me. It didn’t feel like I had an audience; I just spoke my mind.” Her answer framed poetry as personal speech before a performance piece, an unrehearsed sense of honesty delivered within a rehearsed competition format. 

Carrie Ella Smith, the 1st runner-up, also describes a process driven by clarity, even though her method was different. “I randomly chose my poem at random,” she said, but quickly added context that defined her intention. She was “really looking for a sunshine motif” and felt satisfied that “A Hymn to the Evening fulfilled that motif.” Her selections were purposeful in mood rather than subject, built around imagery that felt warm and light-focused. Carrie Ella’s enthusiasm centered on the event itself. “I was so excited to see all of the people performing. I love being in a group with such talented people!” Poetry, for her, was part of a shared experience, strengthened by community rather than performance pressure. For the reflection takeaway, Carrie Ella pointed to the emotional idea she hoped listeners would recognize from “Separation” by Sophie Jewitt—that “the nature of separation and how two people can be far apart physically but their hearts close to one another.”  Ultimately, the students’ performances and poem selections set the tone of the evening, but the effect of those choices is ultimately measured in how the audience receives them. 

How the Poems Landed: From the Stage to the Audience

After the Poetry Out Loud event, two audience members described what the night felt like from their seats. During the interviews, it became clear how differently people process the same night. One audience member said the poems inspired him but also carried him toward a shift in perspective. “They made me feel inspired and thoughtful and have an epiphany of injustice in some poems,” he said, articulating the moment poetry moved from appreciation to recognition. What stood out wasn’t the inspiration itself, but its evolution. It didn’t bloom slowly; it redirected his thinking mid-line. The competition wasn’t just recitation; he clarified that indirectly. It was the place where language stops being text and starts becoming thought. His response led naturally into the same idea that poetry works best when it makes the listener think beyond the performance, not just applaud it. The other audience member said the poems left her feeling inspired as well, though she emphasized how the language itself shaped the experience. “They were an immersion of lyrical wordplay and artistic expression,” she said, explaining that poetry only needed to be honest, intentional, and have creative expression to feel meaningful. She described the poems as layered in emotion, particularly ones touching on injustice and womanhood. 

When asked for a favorite poem, Audience Member 1 named “Compound/Tell Me About Him,” an original poem by Cannon Ozug. He said, “It was very unique, and he was able to incorporate long and complicated words into a beautiful poem.” His reasoning admired how the complexity of certain words in the poem was intentional and used purposefully in a beautiful manner.  The other audience member chose “Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe and said it simply “moved me to tears,” adding that the poem stood out because of the meaning portrayed by the delivery.  

Both audience members stated that they particularly enjoyed the teen jazz band between poems, emphasizing that the music made the night feel more alive, keeping it from feeling monotone. Audience Member 1 put it best: “I loved the music, it cleansed my palate of my mind,” describing the jazz interludes as moments for mental resets between poems. All together, the planning, poem interpretations, and audience reflections highlight the competition’s success as both a staged performance and a shared experience. 

Conclusion

Poetry Out Loud succeeds not just as a competition, but as an experience where performance becomes a tool for connection, comprehension, and confidence. The contestants’ approaches—theme-centered alignment from Namira Rubaiyath and motif-focused imagery from Carrie Ella Smith—were different, but neither of them treated interpretation as secondary. Audience members described reactions shaped by personal understanding: poems that sparked reflection on injustice, phrasing that stood out for emotional delivery or intentional language, and jazz interludes that supported energy and pacing. Mrs. Robinson’s role validated the importance of infrastructure, community, and coaching behind every recital. Her own words highlighted appreciation for the teachers and systems that support student voice, specifically acknowledging the leadership of Mrs. Spradlin and the efficiency of Mr. Ben Davis’s score-tallying spreadsheet. The National Endowment for the Arts, along with the Poetry Foundation, created the competition’s foundation, but the students and listeners created its meaning in the room. The night demonstrated that poetry lands when it is delivered with intent and received through individual experience, allowing the connection to be personal.