For the eleventh year, Gorham High School (GHS) participated in Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation competition funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and supported by the Maine Arts Commission.
This competition encourages high school students to explore poetry through memorization and performance. Students are judged in the areas of physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, accuracy, and overall performance.
This year, 25 students participated in the school-wide competition at GHS. Senior Abigail vanLuling won the event and senior Isabella Solari was the runner-up.
Photo courtesy of the Maine Arts CommissionSenior Abbie vanLuling placed in the top five at the state level of the Poetry Out Loud competition.
Over 9,500 students from 39 high schools participated in this program across the state. From those students, a winner from each participating school competed in one of the two regional finals. In the southern region, a total of 20 schools competed at Westbrook High School on February 28.
From this competitive pool, vanLuling placed as one of the top five finalists who went on to compete in the state final. She recited her poems at Waterville Opera House on March 20 and was selected as one of the top five performers overall.
The winner, Allan Monga from Deering High School, will go to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national finals this month. In the last ten years, GHS has had a state finalist in this competition five times. In 2014, GHS student Charlotte Feinberg was the Maine state champion.
van Luling encourages students to give the competition a try. “It is scary the first time, but after that, it is wonderful to be able to get up on stage and share your work,” said vanLuling. “There are some beautiful poems to be recited, and once you find one you truly love, reciting becomes so much easier.”