Junior Elizabeth Kline glided her hands rhythmically across her legs, imitating the sound of a tide while delivering a powerful rendition of Arthur Sze’s poem “At the Equinox” at the Poetry Out Loud competition held in Room 006 on Jan. 17.
Other students and staff, seated in a half-circle at the back of room 006, listened to the soft sounds coupled with her clear voice. As the poem progressed, Kline rose from the stool, sustaining the soft, oceanic rhythm by rubbing her hands together, immersing the audience in her performance.
Kline and eight other students were competing in Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation competition organized by National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Poetry Foundation. While the competition has been running for 20 years, this is the fifth time that the school has participated in, said English teacher Amy Keys, who organized the event.
The nine contestants were juniors Lavanya Bose, Willis Chung, Patrick Keogh, Kline, Florence Hu, Liam Lenh, Grace Lin and Ruiyan Zhu and senior Timothy Leung. Each performed two poems, chosen from a list of over 1,000 approved poems.
A panel of teacher and staff judges including district Public Information and Engagement Officer Tanya De La Cruz, assistant principal Abra Evanoff and English teachers Marcos Cortez and Suzanne Herzman scored each participant’s performance. The judges selected Kline and Leung to represent the school in the county competition on Feb. 6 at Starting Arts in San Jose.
Saratoga High’s competition went on pause last year when Keys was on leave, but returned with a high level of participation this year. She views this event as more of a valuable experience for growth and development rather than a competition.
“I think Poetry Out Loud is an amazing opportunity to see kids come alive in ways they don’t get a lot of opportunities to otherwise,” Keys said. “So much of the way we engage with text is through reading and writing it silently. So, it’s also a great opportunity to grapple with and understand the text in a different and creative way.”
Kline chose to recite “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “At the Equinox” by Arthur Sze. The former had been one of her favorite poems ever since she heard it years ago, and Kline was eager to have the chance to memorize and perform it.
“Ozymandias is ironic because it shows this wreck of this dictator and the great civilization he built. [He made all these] sacrifices so he could rule and build what he wanted, but in the end there’s nothing left,” Kline said. “Doing Poetry Out Loud gave me a chance to really dissect it and understand what emotions should be portrayed.”
Leung decided to perform the poems “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee and “Ways of Talking” by Ha Jin, drawn by the deep resonance he felt with their themes and also the wide variety of emotions they contained.
“‘Ways of talking’ portrays different ways of expressing grief, and how the more you endure, the less inclined you are to express the grief, which I thought was a really interesting concept,” Leung said. “This poem also stood out to me because the middle stanza has so much emotion in it, and I really wanted to be able to express that in the performance.”
Beyond exploring his poems, the competition offered Leung a new perspective and a sense of belonging in a community of like-minded people.
“I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, and none of my friends were doing it. But this competition was a really inspiring experience, seeing so many others who share the same passion and love for what I do (Speech),” Leung said. Leung has been a national-level competitor in speech competitions for several years.
Within the two weeks leading up to the competition, many students received one-on-one coaching from Keys and Herzman, performing their poems either in private or in front of a small student audience. Keys started by asking each student why they chose their poems and what messages they hoped to convey. This approach helped students decode the deeper meanings and emotions of their pieces, enabling them to bring those elements to life in their performances.
“Students will start up kind of tentative or unsure of what a certain poem means or what a certain line means,” Keys said. “Just watching the way that it becomes theirs and evolves over time has been fun for me to watch. I see how [the way a student recites] a line changes; how their connection with the audience changes; and how their confidence really comes out; and it’s totally inspiring and uplifting.”
