As the National English Honor Society (NEHS) board members set up tables of coffee and cookies, PPCHS students made their way towards the Southwest Regional Library Auditorium to attend the club’s 12th annual Poetry Slam. The Slam invites students to recite their own poetry onstage. The event also serves as round two for NEHS’s Recite Night, and the top 10 reciters compete to advance to the state level.
Though the Slam is a casual event, for many, original poetry is an emotional outlet. After long weeks, students write down their feelings in a “brain dump,” which sometimes manifests as creative writing. The Poetry Slam allows kids to be proud of their work and express thoughts that may be hard to articulate otherwise.
“Writing is one of the ways I can lay down my emotions and turn them into something meaningful,” says Jocelyn Perez, a junior who recited her free verse poem “Museums of Almosts.” “Not only is it good because I’m not keeping everything bottled up, but I’m able to have a creative lens with it as well and make my emotions beautiful,” Perez notes that she also enjoys journaling to express her emotions.
Recite Night finalists, however, had to choose a poem from Poetry Out Loud’s anthology to memorize. Reciters had to take into consideration diction, imagery, and context to understand the poem’s deeper meaning. While looking through the anthology, most finalists searched for a piece that reflected their emotions and resonated with them. However, recent controversy surrounding changes to the anthology pushed some performers in the opposite direction.
“Poetry Out Loud removed almost every single poem on the [website]. They removed my original poem, ‘The Poison Tree,’ which really resonated with me,” says finalist Derek Thompson. The junior performed “The Last Morning in the Country,” by renowned poet Leonora Speyer. “I spent an hour looking through the revised site until I got to the poem I recited at the Slam, which wasn’t my favorite, but it was the only one I could find that even remotely resonated with me.”
After each performer recited their poem, attendees enjoyed cookies and coffee.
“I was, at first, kind of hesitant [to recite] because I feel like writing poems is a pretty vulnerable and personal thing, at least the poems that I wrote, so having to recite that and share that to a room of people is a little nerve-racking,” says NEHS Media Liaison Arianna Morillo. “Afterwards, I felt really proud of myself, especially since it was something that I was nervous about, and I definitely became more confident because of it,” she continues.
Despite nerves, each performer, even officers, left NEHS’s 12th annual Poetry Slam more confident than they came.
The Poetry Out Loud Finalist is Faith Banossian, who will represent PPCHS at the state level.
