By Ms. Dalton on November 15, 2022
On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, seven students competed in the Grafton High School Poetry Out Loud competition. Poetry Out Loud is a national program which starts at the school level and works its way through qualifiers on the way to the national level. GHS began competing in this competition in 2016, but due to COVID restrictions, the contest was not able to be held since 2020.
The seven students were chosen as class representatives after analyzing, memorizing, and reciting a poem in front of their English classes. The students then chose a second poem to memorize. As part of the competition, students were required to recite two poems in front of the entire student body. These courageous and confident students were Brock Lewis, sophomore; M. J. Niggemyer, sophomore; Violet Rubenstein, sophomore; Jaylin Summers, freshman; Alexa Swyck, freshman; Caroline Wellman, junior; and Karigan Wildroudt, sophomore.
Mrs. Wilson read a poem at the beginning of the contest to display poetry etiquette to the student body. Mrs. Mayle and Mr. Rucker provided sound for the event, allowing the variety of voices to be heard. There were two creative judges and one accuracy judge: Mary Brown, Melissa Garvin, and Renee Mahon. The judges’ scores were tallied by GHS math teacher, Mrs. Glaspell. Caroline Wellman, junior, was the GHS 2022 Poetry Out Loud winner, and Alexa Swyck, freshman, was the GHS 2022 Poetry Out Loud runner up. The students will travel to Charleston, WV, on March 10 for the state competition.
