Throughout the school year Alisal holds various poetry competitions in which students can show their poetic prowess to other students and teachers. One of the competitions, the Evening of the Spoken Word, is held twice a year, in the fall and again in the spring. Alisal has sent poets to the competition every year, and the students have gotten close to winning the city title for Alisal, but has fallen short the last few competitions.

This year a different poetry competition, Poetry Out Loud, was implemented by various English teachers in their classrooms. There are two things that differentiate Poetry Out Loud from local poetry competitions like Evening of the Spoken Word, the competition’s scope, and its poetic content. Students who participate in Poetry Out Loud have the chance of being declared as the best high school poetry performer in the country, and students don’t have to compose their own poem in order to enter the competition, instead they choose a poem from the Poetry Out Loud website, and you recite it. How you perform/recite the poem is the key to advancing in the competition.

The Poetry Out Loud competition has been held yearly since 2005, but Alisal only started to participate in the competition a few years ago. One of the early proponents of the competition was senior English teacher Ignacio Mendez. Mendez first tried the competition out with his AP students, as a way to get them acquainted with the kind of poetry that’s on the AP English Literature exam,”I chose to have my students participate in this program as both a way to review and deconstruct poetry, and as a different way to approach the subject, not just with homework assignments, but with an actual performance aspect to it.”

As described on the Poetry Out Loud website, the competition is organized with,”a pyramid structure that starts at the classroom level. Winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to a regional and/or state competition, and ultimately to the National Finals”. At the “classroom level”, various English teachers at Alisal had students choose a poem from the Poetry Out Loud website and perform it in class. The school-wide competition consisted of the best students from each class that was participating. In the end two students, seniors Florencia Gregorio and Christian Quiroz, were chosen to represent Alisal at the regional level, which would have them battle students from all over Monterey County. Christian was very used to competing in poetry competitions, previously helping Alisal retrieve the city title at the Evening of the Spoken Word in 2014, however he had not participated in anything of this scope,”I was pretty stoked at being chosen for the county finals. I’m used to participating in city competitions, but I’d never participated in anything nationally, or anything in which you didn’t need to have an original piece to perform, which was different, but at the same time I knew I did not have to worry about composing an original poem, they judged you more on the emotion you expelled during your performance.”

Only one student would be chosen to represent Monterey County at the state competition in a month, to decide who would be assigned the task of doing so, the regional competition was held in Carmel on February 11, and featured students from Pacific Grove High School, Seaside High School, Gonzalez High School, and Alisal High School. Since Christian was the runner-up at the school-wide competition he only performed one poem, “El Olvido” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, while Florencia performed two poems, “Bent to the Earth” by Blas Manuel de Luna, and “To the Desert” by Benjamin Alire Saenz. After a few rounds of competition Florencia was tied with a student from Seaside, Keishawn Robinson, and the tie breaker came after Keishawn skipped a line from his poem. And so Florencia was declared the winner of the Monterey County Poetry Out Loud competition, and would now represent the county at the state finals.

After she was chosen to go and represent Monterey County, Florencia got to studying her poems until she knew them inside and out, “I spent a lot of time memorizing the poems and also developing a routine for my performance,” said Florencia. Although she memorized her poems, Florencia still felt the pressure mounting as the state competition was a few weeks away, “I was nervous because the competition would have the best of the best from every county in California, and in the end only one would be chosen for the national competition. I felt like the odds were against me.”

The state competition was held in Sacramento over three days, March 11-13. Florencia was accompanied by both her family and senior English teacher, Mr. Mendez. Mendez was also Florencia’s advisor for the competition ,”I was there for both moral support and to coach Florencia on how she should present her poems. I’ve found that most of the time the students have the poems memorized, but sometimes they’re just so nervous that it gets to them and they forget.”

Florencia presented the same poems as in the county competition: “Bent to the Earth” by Blas Manuel de Luna and “To the Desert” by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Florencia chose these poems to represent what some Latino families struggle after immigrating. “With all of the current political turmoil regarding immigration, I felt like these poems were not just great poems to perform, but I also thought they would give me a bit more emotional impact on the judges.”

The state competition was broken into three rounds. In the first round each competitor recited one poem, Mendez described it as a “warm-up round”, as the judges didn’t eliminate anybody. The second and third rounds were held in the Senate chamber of the state capitol building, and this is where the number of competitors started shrinking. Florencia was first in line to recite her poem in the second round, and after everyone else had recited theirs, the judges gathered to decide who would move on to the final round.

In the third round only 11 contestants remained, including Florencia, and the judges were having a hard time choosing the winner. According to Mendez, Florencia reached the final round easily, “Watching Florencia present her poem along with the other competitors, I felt like she had an edge to her, she had a bit more flare to her presentation, and she didn’t make any mistakes either.”

Unfortunately, in the final round Florencia made a fatal mistake,”I hadn’t realize I had skipped a line until I got off the stage and Mendez told me, I think that is what stopped the judges from declaring me the winner.” Since the competition did not have a proper placing system, Florencia was not told what place she received, but according to Mendez, “I am pretty sure that Florencia placed top five because she was one of the best performers that day, but it was that skipped line that affected her performance. Overall, it was a surprise seeing compete in the competition, I didn’t know she had that kind of emotion in her, especially since she’s one of the quieter students in my class.”

Even though she didn’t win the competition Florencia is still pleased with how the competition went, “The experience was great, seeing other performers from all of California, it’s a bummer that they could only pick one student to represent California. I feel like everyone who reached the last round of the competition was the best, no one made mistakes, and I think it was really hard for the judges to pick who moved on. I would participate in the competition next year, but I am a senior, but I hope that teachers keep implementing this into their curriculum.”

If you’d like Florencia recite her poems on camera you can click on the  link below. Her performance starts at 14 minutes in. She performs again at about 31 minutes in. She is crowned the winner at about an hour in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1VDtQWUWfY&t=1856s