Melissa Gebhard

Senior Etta Brazel recites poem at South’s Poetry Out Loud competition.

Picture yourself standing in front of a crowd and judges while trying to correctly recite a poem. For some people this may sound like a nightmare, but for a few students at South, this is a fun competition known as Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud is an annual poetry competition for students across the country. The competitions are initially just school competitions, but the school champion then has the opportunity to move on to the regional, state, and national competition. 

The winner of South’s Jan. 21 competition was senior Etta Brazel. Brazel won the competition by reciting the poems “Recurrence” by Dorothy Parker and “Do You Know” by Alice Duer Miller, which Brazel believes is one of her favorite poems.

“I love ‘Do You Know’,” Brazel said. “As a woman who wants to go into the medical field, it was a very powerful woman’s suffrage poem that expressed the hardships of women going into male-dominated fields.” 

Students who would like to compete in the competition are able to pick from a list of hundreds of poems on Poetry Out Loud’s website.

According to senior Nasrah Alli, who also participated in the competition, enjoying the topic of the poem isn’t the only thing she considers when picking which poems to recite. For her, the length of the poem is very important as well.

“I try to pick a shorter poem because I would forget it if it is too long,” Alli said. 

The list of poems on Poetry Out Loud’s website that students were able to pick from was shortened this year with the hopes that the list would represent mainly American poetry. Despite the list being shortened, senior Katy Nozaki felt like there were still plenty to choose from.

“I didn’t have any problems picking a poem. I think there were plenty of options,” Nozaki said.

Each year, teachers are able to have their students participate in Poetry Out Loud, but this year AP Literature students were the only students who were involved. According to English teacher Steve Wissinger, who helped run the event, any students who wanted  to participate were welcome to join even if their whole class was not.

“Other interested students could reach out to me directly,” he said. 

AP Literature students had an in-class competition where they each had to recite one poem, and then Wissinger picked the five best students to move on to the school-wide competition, according to Nozaki.

“He had us all memorize and recite a poem, and then he picked his favorites to do it again. I wasn’t really expecting to be picked, but then I was,” Nozaki said.

Wissinger believes some students may be wary about participating in Poetry Out Loud because of the nerves that can come along with the competition. 

“The hardest part is probably getting over the nerves of public speaking,” Wissinger said. “Getting up in front of people and reciting something you have memorized is scary.”

A winner is chosen by a panel of judges who give each person a score of 1-6 in the categories of physical presence, voice and articulation, interpretation, evidence of understanding, and overall performance. Whoever received the highest score won.

 Brazel thinks that although there are multiple elements that have to come together for a poem to be recited well. One of the most important elements is that she knows the true meaning behind each poem she recites.

“Making sure you fully understand the poem is important so that when you recite it, you get the intended feelings across,” Brazel said.

According to Alli, planning how you want to recite the poem and what movements you want to add can end up being just as important as memorizing and understanding.

“Once I know the lines, I figure out what I should do with my hands,” Alli said. “I also have to figure out when I should raise my voice.”

There were multiple ways that students worked to memorize their poem, but Nozaki preferred to practice by herself.

“I just memorized them, and I practiced them in my room as if I was practicing for like, Speech and Debate,” Nozaki said.

While some students were successful practicing by themselves, other students preferred to practice in front of real people, so they could get used to having an audience, according to Brazel.

“I do a lot of consistent practice with memorization and tone, mainly forcing my boyfriend to listen to me say it over and over again,” Brazel said.

As South’s champion, Brazel will next compete in the regional competition on Feb. 10 at the Florissant Performing Arts Center at 6 p.m., where she will be reciting “Do You Know” by Alice Duer Miller, “Recurrence” by Dorothy Parker, and “The Aim Was Song” by Robert Frost.

“I’m very excited to meet fellow students who are as passionate about poetry as me,” Brazel said. “Of course, I’m worried about not doing well, but I’m more excited and thankful for the opportunity to perform.”