INTERLOCHEN — Several young students performed poetry in a way that not only reached people, but grabbed state and national attention.
Interlochen Arts Academy senior Paige Cook was named 2024 Michigan Poetry Out Loud State Champion and is headed to the national finals in Washington, D.C. April 30 — May 2.
“I think there’s a poem inside of everyone, and I think that opportunities like this open people up to the world of poetry, which is a really beautiful one,” said Cook of their experience reciting three poems, which must include one written prior to 1900 and another longer than 25 lines.
Cook read “Portrait of My Gender as [Inaudible]” by Meg Day; “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be” by John Keats; and “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich.
Michigan’s second runner-up is Leland Public School sophomore Ingrid Paciorka. She read “Where the Wild Things Go” by D Gilson; “I Eat Breakfast to Begin the Day” by Zubair Ahmed; and “I won’t come” by Kabir.
“It’s asking yourself, ‘how can I accurately portray what the author was trying to communicate here in a way that makes sense to me?’ And, ‘how can I read this poem in a way that makes it feel like I’m speaking it from my heart?’”
Both competed as their school’s top contestant in the Poetry Out Loud State Finals in Lansing on March 9. Presented in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is a national program that encourages secondary students to explore culture, history, and contemporary issues by studying great poetry and the art of performance.
Since its launch in 2005, the Poetry Out Loud program has grown to reach more than 4.2 million students and 72,000 educators, and has involved more than 18,000 schools and organizations nationwide.
In the 2023-2024 season, a whopping 3,800 Michigan students and 85 educators participated.
The program is facilitated by the Humanities Council in Michigan, begins in the classroom with free educational resources, like a suggested curriculum, Poetry Out Loud Guide lesson ideas, state benchmarks and standards, and tips for how to incorporate poetry practice into daily instruction.
The Poetry Out Loud anthology, available both online and in print, offers access to more than 1,200 curated poems.
“It’s such an incredible educational tool — not only for kids reading poetry, but also for following their own interests and having some agency in their education,” said Interlochen Theater Arts instructor Andrew McGinn. McGinn and Stephen John were Cook’s POL teachers.
Competition kicks off with preliminary school or organizational rounds, wherein students are evaluated according to official criteria, including accuracy (a critical piece, McGinn stressed), voice and articulation, physical presence, as well as evidence of understanding and dramatic interpretation.
“Some of the hardest choices for me were figuring out how to deliver the words in each line,” Paciorka said.
The ultimate round of POL competition is the highly-selective National Finals, wherein students from all 50 states, as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands, The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa convene for a semi-final sequence. From there, the top nine scoring students advance to the final competition. All told, the event distributes $50,000 in prizes and school/organizational stipends (through The Poetry Foundation), $20,000 of which is awarded to the National Poetry Out Loud Champion.
The benefits the program offers, though, run so much deeper than just prize money.
For starters, there are the practical tools that come with learning to work with a text, like analysis skills, critical thinking, and memorization techniques; all of which students can put to use across other academic fields. Orator skills, or building the confidence to comfortably address a crowd, is another biggie, which instructors point out is often lacking in modern school curricula.
“I think the program helps a lot with being yourself on stage and sharing something that’s important to you,” said Cook. “It’s a very vulnerable process, regardless of how you go about it; and figuring out how to share that with other people is awesome.”
There’s also an unsung networking piece to the program, especially for finalist participants, that includes access to collaborative workshops (and even rubbing elbows with poet laureates), explorative writing exercises, and an opportunity to connect with likeminded people outside of the classroom bubble.
Paciorka’s mom, Leland Public School English instructor and POL coordinator Jennifer Walter-Paciorka, said that poetry is a language that allows students to build a global vision.
“We can learn a lot from poetry, because it’s a way of connecting people. You wonder about the person who wrote it and what [life] is like where they’re from,” Walter-Paciorka said.
That empathy and human connection is the most significant impact of the program, said Michigan Humanities President & CEO Jennifer Rupp.
“What concerns me right now is that we’ve forgotten how to have conversations with one another,” Rupp said. “We’re so focused on this narrow line of information we’re fed through algorithms, that we’re no longer open to seeing how someone’s personal journey could be impacting their beliefs or worldview.”
Poetry, however, replaces those algorithms with the lived stories and experiences of other people; and by giving body and voice to their words, the Poetry Out Loud program not only reinvigorates — but actually facilitates — some of those tough conversations.
“These students are so courageous and brave, and they really make these poems their own,” Rupp said. “It’s the one program I cry at every single year.”