This week, Bob Jones students participated in the Poetry Out Loud Contest in the AV room. They attempted to bring poems to life through their voices.
“The purpose of Poetry Out Loud is to promote poetry and spoken word. Poetry benefits students in many ways. It encourages them to explore a wide variety of literature and to build skills in analyzing and interpreting a variety of writing. It also gives students an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding through a public forum and build confidence in their own abilities to present material to a wide audience,” commented Mrs. Hadden, the Poetry Out Loud coordinator.
Two Bob Jones students walked away with first place prizes that night. Khadijah Thompson won first place in Anthology Recitation and Mary Butgereit won first place in Original Recitation. Both were presented with one hundred dollars provided by the National English Honors Society.
When asked how she felt about standing up and performing in front of so many people, Mary responded, “Since I do monologues for drama, it wasn’t that bad. It was still scary though. It wasn’t as terrifying as I thought.”
If Mary and Khadijah choose to continue competing, they will proceed to UAH for the regional competition and then to Montgomery for the state level competition. If Khadijah places at state, Khadijah will continue to Washington D.C. for nationals. There isn’t a national level competition for original poetry through Poetry Out Loud.
It takes a lot to do any kind of public speaking, let alone a competitive, memorized recitation. These girls have shown that they are not only passionate and good communicators, but that they are brave and care about the message they want to send.
