Two students say it proud with Poetry Out Loud

Two Clark County students are ready to slam their way into spoken-word stardom at next weekend’s state Poetry Out Loud competition.

Battle Ground High School junior Laney Pham and Vancouver School of Arts and Academics sophomore Isabella Daltoso will advance to the state Poetry Out Loud competition March 4 after receiving the two top spots at the Educational Service District 112 contest. Students select pieces of poetry to recite and perform. They’re judged on physical appearance, articulation, dramatic appropriateness and their ability to “breathe life” into the piece, according to the competition’s website.

It’s that last point that holds most true for Pham and Daltoso, as both girls selected pieces that spoke to their own lives and experiences.

Pham, whose parents are Vietnamese immigrants, had a language barrier through school, she said. She spoke Vietnamese at home, which meant it was often a challenge to communicate at school.

“I grew up not being able to express my feelings,” she said.

But as a high school student, she took a chance, joining speech and debate to improve her speaking skills, and later through an English teacher found out about Poetry Out Loud and began to participate.

“Poetry Out Loud to me is like delivering my thoughts and expressions through an art form,” she said.

Pham selects poems that share part of her story. At the state competition, she’ll perform “Beautiful Wreckage” by W.D. Ehrhart. She has a unique advantage in her reading of the piece: the poem is about the writer’s experience fighting in the Vietnam War, and contains words in Vietnamese.

“My main focus is to deliver something the audience can take in by heart,” Pham said.

Daltoso also selected pieces with which she shared a personal connection. In finding her poems, Daltoso said she looked for work she could keep “truthful and honest” in her recitation.

“The trick is to let the text do the work,” she said.

The VSAA student participates in theater productions and takes voice lessons, so she homed in on classic American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Arrow and the Song.” Longfellow in the piece describes the staying power of music in the hearts of his friends, a concept that resonated with the young artist.

“It stuck with me because it talks about topics that I am very passionate about: music and friendship,” she said. “This poem is about putting yourself out there and finding yourself and finding your place and finding that you are unbroken.”

The winner of the state competition, which will be held in Tacoma, will receive $200 and an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete nationally. The winner’s school will also receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books, while the runner-up will receive $100 with $200 going to their school library. The national competition is in April. The winner of the national Poetry Out Loud competition will receive $20,000, with the next eight runners-up receiving smaller prizes as well as money for their school libraries.

In Washington, 70 schools, 21,357 students and 3,001 teachers participated in last year’s Poetry Out Loud competition. Washington has one national champion, Langston Ward of Spokane in 2013.