The Gallery
Poetry competition at state levelMonday, December 19, 2011 By Tabitha Gaddy
Seventeen students took their seats in the media center’s reserved section for the upcoming battle. December 29 marked the day of the school-wide Poetry Out Loud (POL) competition. These students of mixed grades recited various poems. They had won their classroom competition and were moving on to the higher ranks of POL. Out of seventeen students, two competed in the district-wide competition: freshmen Julia Illana and Ardyn Flynt. “I thought seeing all the poems preformed was my favorite,” Flynt said. “If I had just read them I would have interpreted them differently than other people recited them. I thought that was really beautiful seeing the different perspectives.” While POL has been active annually for years, this is DSA’s first year participating. Kathryn Van Dis, English and Writing Through Literature teacher, introduced DSA to the competition. “We have a tendency towards these kinds of activities,” Van Dis said. “I knew that our students would take to it very well, and I feel like I was right… they did a beautiful job with it.” “You could tell a lot of people in theater here read it like a monologue,” Flynt commented. “The thing about recitation that makes them different from a monologue is that you’re not talking at the audience, you’re talking with the audience.” Van Dis organized DSA’s participation, from classroom to school-wide competitions. She plans to organize POL for DSA next year as well, and hopes to get more schools and teachers involved. Flynt also wants other schools to be involved. “I think it would be nice if more schools did it because it really is a neat way to, one, get involved, two, read poetry, three, skip class,” she laughed. Flynt won the district round and is going on to the statewide competition, which will be in early March. “It’s great that DSA will be represented at the statewide level, and I think Ardyn has a good shot of winning the statewide competition as well,” Van Dis said. “That’d be really cool if she was the state finalist. She’d go on to nationals.” “I’m really actually interested in hearing the accents, quite honestly,” Flynt said. She “obviously” wants to win the $20,000 at nationals, but doesn’t expect to win the statewide competition. She was impressed both with the school-wide and the district-wide competition. “They had just memorized their poem that morning because they didn’t really realize that they needed a second poem and they were great,” she recalled. “I think the school thing was more just fun, and then I was more nervous when I got to districts because I think this school is more of an enjoyable [place].” |