By Judith Roberts
Poetry is everybody’s thing.
Ruston Cultural District is hosting its Poetry Out Loud competition Sunday, Dec. 10 and hopes area residents will realize that poetry is for everyone.
“Poetry, to me, just doesn’t get enough exposure,” said Tami Alexander, cultural district board member. “People will say, ‘I’m not into poetry.’ Well, how do you know? Because we have somebody doing Keats. We have somebody doing Bronte. And then we have several who are doing poems from present day poets that sound like a conversation. It’s so beautiful with all the visual imagery that hits your mind and your thought process while they’re talking. Poetry is such a beautiful art form.”
This particular competition is part of a national Poetry Out Loud organization that is funded by the Endowment for the Arts and allows high school students to compete for scholarships. The Ruston Cultural District’s city competition is one of several in the parish, and those who win at the city level will an opportunity to compete at regionals, then, if successful, a state level competition, and, if successful there, nationals.
“You can win scholarship money on the regional, state and national level,” Alexander said. “It’s also free to any student, and the state makes sure that their materials are paid for and their travel is paid for each time a student advances.”
Nationwide, more than a million students participate in Poetry Out Loud competitions. For the cultural distrtict’s competition, seven students have been practicing for months and will compete at Sunday’s event.
“We’ve had several interest group meetings and we started out, I think with about maybe 12 kids and now we’re down to seven,” Alexander said. “And it’s not that they weren’t interested – it’s just that kids on the high school level are involved in so many things.”
The students choose poems from the Poetry Out Loud’s database, which includes thousands of options, and they are judged on accuracy, sound of voice, pacing, and delivery. Judges for the competition will be Emogene Alexander, Jonathan Jackson from Grambling State University, and Cherrie Sciro and Genaro Smith from Louisiana Tech University.
“We have an amazing community of visual artists and performing artists in our community,” Alexander said. “I have loved the rehearsals. Some of them have been so moving that I’ve cried. We’re just at the rehearsal portion of this, and I am weeping. It’s beautiful to see their thought process and how they’re challenging themselves and putting themselves out there to do something that is not easy. It’s easier to do a monologue or a scene with somebody because it is a conversation, and it’s hard to get that in your mind that this is a poem, but it’s a poem that I’m conversing through and I’m having a conversation inside this text. And helping them understand that has made it a lot better for them where they don’t feel like it’s just recitation.”
The cultural district’s Poetry Out Loud competition is free and open to the public and will begin at 6:30 p.m. at the MARC Building, 504 E. Georgia Ave.
