Schools

RBR holds Poetry Out Loud competition

This year's state winners will compete in the 2011 National Finals in Washington D.C.

Red Bank Regional High School held its second Poetry Out Loud competition on Jan. 14 with the participation of 30 students. Chloe Fallon, Neptune City, took first place with her performance of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29. She will go on to compete in the regional event held at the Two River Theatre on Feb. 17. Reid Henderson, Avon, came in second with his recitation of Poe's A Dream Within a Dream, Dani Berkowitz, Shrewsbury, took third place honors with her performance of Mrs. Kessler by Edgar Lee Masters, and Kelsey Murphy, Shrewsbury, was fourth runner-up reciting Football by Kenneth Jenkins.

Chloe is already preparing for the regional event, where she will be asked to perform three poems. Like her fellow students who placed in the competition, Chloe is an RBR drama major. Sonnet 29 is her favorite poem, which she performed to audition for RBR’s VPA drama program four years ago. An aspiring actress, Chloe has recently appeared in several community theatre productions and performed the lead role in the Actors’ Playground’s ‘Dentity Crisis staged in Freehold this past summer.

The poems performed for the Poetry Out-Loud event are self-selected by students from the program’s website. Judging, as prescribed by the program, is based on categories of physical resonance, voice and articulation, appropriateness of dramatization, level of difficulty, evidence of understanding and overall performance.

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Judges for this year’s RBR Poetry Out Loud were: Principal Risa Clay, Assistant Principal Will Smith, English teachers Sara Van Ness, Sean Hickey, Cass Dorn, and Academy of Information Technology teacher Mandy Galante.

Andrew Forrest, an RBR English teacher, introduced the Poetry Out Loud program to RBR last year.

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“Poetry Out Loud offers the chance for students to really be with a poem, to listen to it, and pay attention to the various nuances within the text,” says Forrest. “The art of reciting someone else's poem is an act of compassion in which a student learns the art of listening to and presenting someone else's words. In this sense, students embody Atticus Finch's plea to walk a mile in someone else's shoes. In many ways, Poetry Out Loud promotes and enhances what literature also promotes and enhances: close listening, compassion, and artful communication."

Poetry Out Loud is presented in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. It was launched in high schools across America in the spring of 2006. A pyramid competition, the first round takes place in students’ home high schools and then proceeds to a regional and state competition.

This year’s state winners will compete in the 2011 National Finals, which will take place in Washington D.C. on April 29, 2011.

For more information on the Poetry Out Loud program, visit their website at www.poetryoutloud.org.

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