On January 9th, West Morris Central High School held the second round of its annual Poetry Out Loud competition. Poetry Out Loud is a national competition where students all over the country must choose a poem to recite from memorization in front of a panel of judges, says the event’s official website. The contest begins at a local level, and participants advance further as they win.
In West Morris, all Central freshmen in Advanced/Honors English classes are made to participate in the contest. The first round of the school year took place at a classroom level, and the second round took place in the school library during lunch, where nine freshmen who won the first round performed their recitations: Ben Labar, Aiden Palemy, Kaila Libert, Zuzanna Tarnawska, Olivia Heydorn, Abby Czinkota, Ella Vasconzuelo, Griffin Veletto, and Callen Mahoney. Every recitation was followed by a few moments of silence as the judges tallied up their scores.
Performances, says the Poetry-Out-Loud website, are generally judged based on the student’s pace, tone and rhythm, how a student’s recital reflects their understanding of the poem, the confidence in the student’s demeanour, among other important factors. Zuzanna Tarnawska earned the most points in the school-wide competition with her performance of “Common Dust” by Georgia Douglas Johnson. The piece questions the importance of mankind’s existence in the face of inevitable death. Zuzanna Tarnawska used both her gestures and her words to capture the poem’s frank, serious tone.
When asked why she chose the poem she did, Tarnawska said, “Especially in the poems I write, I usually go for more existential questions about the nature of mankind, so it just fit very well with the things I’m used to reading.” Tarnawska will be the second student from West Morris to attend the Poetry-Out-Loud regional competition. The Paw wishes her the best of luck in her endeavours!
