This year marked the 20th anniversary of Poetry Out Loud at Judge Memorial. Every year the entire school comes together and, in their separate English classes, memorizes and recites a poem in front of the class. Those who perform well go on to perform in front of all the English classes in their respective period. The final step of the process at Judge is to recite your poem in front of the entire school during an assembly. From there it’s regions, states, and nationals.
Memorizing a poem is hard enough on its own but memorizing and reciting it well is its own different beast. Junior Guadalupe Medina took the win this year with her astounding performance of “The Contract Says: We’d Like this Conversation to be Bilingual” by Ada Limón. Medina chose this poem because she “Was intrigued by the long title of the poem.” She also “really liked the meaning behind it.” To describe her poem she said, “It was about how people tend to exaggerate immigrant stories and kind of tend to overlook the good qualities immigrants possess.” Which is something she expressed as feeling connected to. When asked if she thought she’d win she said, “I didn’t think I would win. It was kind of a surprise. But I just had fun with it you know?” Medina now plans on competing in regions and seeing how far she can go.
Another outstanding performance came from Junior Cecilia Tucker who recited “Invisible Children” by Mariana Yanez. Tucker was named an honorable mention and although she didn’t win, she still performed very well. When asked how she felt about her performance, she had this to say, “I felt really good about my performance. This is my third year doing this, so it was pretty natural for me, and I wasn’t too nervous at all….I think all the other poetry contestants are really good support as well.” Tucker said she chose this poem because she “felt really connected to it.” As shown in both of these instances, it is to your benefit to have a connection to the poem you’re reciting as it helps you understand the poem a little better. Tucker, like Medina, emphasized the importance of hand movements when reciting, “I think using my hands a lot during like some of the motions makes the poetry a lot stronger.” She said.
As one year of Poetry Out Loud ends another begins. It is great to see the sportsmanship between different POL candidates and in the end, everyone understands that just going up in front of the school alone is an accomplishment in itself. Both Guadalupe Medina and Cecilia Tucker still have one more year left at Judge and despite my love for sportsmanship, it will be exciting to see these two duke it out in next years Poetry Out Loud Competition.
