Poetry Out Loud

Written by: Senior Intern Jacqueline Rocheleau

Sophomore Ashti Shah represented AMSA at the Poetry Out Loud regional semi-final competition on March 1 in Framingham.  Competing against twenty other school winners from twenty regional schools, Ashti was one of six winners.  These six also competed against eighteen other finalists from four regions at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. 

Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation competition that promotes poetry education in schools in collaboration with state arts agencies (in Massachusetts these include the Huntington Theatre and the Massachusetts Cultural Council). Each year, schools affiliated with this competition host poetry recitations to determine which student has the skills needed to go on to regional competition and possibly state and national competition.

AMSA has been running the Poetry Out Loud preliminary competitions for three years now with exceptional success.  All previous winners from AMSA have won in the regional competition and have gone on to state finals, so Ashti continues the winning streak for AMSA.

Ashti won AMSA’s competition by competing at a classroom level, then a school-wide level, reciting “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou. In order to earn her spot in the semi-finals, Ashti competed against twelve other AMSA students in the contest held at AMSA on Thursday, January 30. 

At the regional competition, Ashti displayed her understanding of the spoken word with “Caged Bird” as well as Countee Cullen’s “Saturday’s Child.”  She will present these two poems, and if she makes the finalists’ round, she has prepared a third poem, Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.”  All of the levels of competition use the same criteria for judging:  stage presence, articulation, understanding and interpretation.  The difficulty of the poem and accuracy of the recitation are also considered in choosing the winners.  Ashti has already proven to AMSA staff and regional judges that she can handle all of the above with poise.    

Competing does not come without reward: state winners receive a monetary prize, a trip to Washington for the national competition, and money for their school to be used for poetry education materials. If Ashti wins the state competition, she will move on to the national competition in Washington D.C. in April.

AMSA is not waiting for the world to change. We are changing the world one student at a time…every day. www.amsacs.org