Poetry Phenome
Amelia Truong is awarded 1st place in Regionals and a chance go to Washington D.C. if she wins state.
Amelia Truong (’21), the school’s Poetry Out Loud Champion, went on to Regionals in St. Charles where she wowed the judges again.
Truong first won the school competition in January and read ‘NUMBERS’ by Mary Cornish. She then went onto the regional competition at the Foundry Art Center in downtown Saint Charles on February 13. She read three pieces, ‘Much Madness is Divinest Sense’ by Emily Dickinson, ‘NUMBERS’ again and ‘Zoom!’ by Simon Armitage. She will continue onto state in March and compete in Jefferson city for the chance to go to Washington DC.
“It was really cool. We were all sat up on a stage, and they announced second place before first and it was really scary because I could’ve been first or nothing.” Truong said that while the crowd was small, her mom was there so it still felt really important.
“Kinda, I know I’m gonna read NUMBERS again because that’s the one I read the best,” Truong said that she definitely won’t be reading ‘Much Madness is Divinest Sense’ because “I chose that without passion, it was just to fit the requirements.”
Poetry Out Loud is a national competition which revolves around how the reader can present and influence the piece they are reading. The organization that runs the event has over 900 poems on their website. The reader chooses one or more of said poems and will read it aloud at the competition. Truong heard about it from Swanson, the teacher who sponsors the event.
The reader can lose points for such things as missing a word, simply changing a word from singular to plural, and more. But simply receiving a perfect score isn’t enough. If it came down to two competitors who both lost zero points, but one read in a flat, dull, monotone voice and their competitor was enthusiastic and changed their rate and pitch accordingly, the more monotone one would lose. It is all about the power of voice.
Last year Maggie Poronto, who graduated this year, went to state but that is as far as she got.
To keep up to date with Truongs state in the competition, visit the links below.
