When Henry Hudson Regional School freshman Evelynn Knox stands before the judges vying for the states award in the Poetry Out Loud competition March 12, she is supported with the enthusiasm, backing, and congratulations of the entire school district.
The Highlands resident, who entered the contest because of her love of poetry and performing, has selected three uniquely different poems for her presentations, and has specific reasons for each of her selections.
The Poetry Out Loud program is a nationwide program created in 2006 by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation. Its purpose is to promote the art of performing poetry, as well as enable a teenager to feel confident in public speaking, gain self-confidence and appreciate poetry as speech raised to its highest intensity .
After competing at the school level, Knox then competed at the regional level to win first place and be able to compete at the state level which this year will be held at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank.
For the competition, the student had to select three poems from an anthology of 900 poems, had to memorize them and had to be certain at least one of the poems was pre-20th century.
Evelynn is only the second student in Henry Hudson’s’ history to advance to the regional level. Lydia Smith was selected for the regional contest twice; however, the contest was cancelled one of those two years due to Covid.
“Evelynn has been an absolute JOY to work with,” said Jessica Merrigan, the English and Yoga instructor and SEL facilitator at Henry Hudson who designed the program for the high school. “She is dedicated and committed to learning the deeper purpose of her poems,” she continued, adding, she performs “each poem in a way that honors the poets. She is prideful of her craft, yet humble and eager to develop her potential. She’s a gem!
Merrigan, who is also the Student Council and Journalism Club advisor in addition to the Poetry Out Loud advisor, has been working with her prize-winning student in preparation for the next competition.
“I love both poetry and performing,” Evelynn said, “and the program combines those two things in the most wonderful way possible.
The student explained she has been involved in theater productions for several years, and admits she has “ grown to be comfortable on the stage.” Still, she continued, “ I had not been very experienced in the world of poetry reading/reciting, despite being very interested in it. I believe the Poetry Out Loud program helps students to learn more about poetry and storytelling, as well allowing them to become more comfortable with performance and presentation. It also sheds light on the wonderful world of poetry and brings people together through powerful storytelling.
Prior to the Poetry Out Loud competition, Evelynn had to choose three poems from the competition’s website, memorize them and practice her recitations. She candidly admits that “though there were many other details put into my performance prior to the competition. I researched each poem thoroughly and broke them down section by section to truly understand what the poet was trying to convey within the poem.”
Understanding the poet, Evelynn explained, would help her expression of the poem, since she would have a better understanding of the words she would be speaking, rather hen simply a recitation of them.
Evelynn’s three poems also show the diversity of her thoughts and the importance to her of understanding not only dialect but imagery and the message itself. Her poems for the competition are Let Evening Come, by Jane Kenyon, The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask by C A Conrad.
In selecting Let Evening Come, by Jane Kenyon, for instance, Evelynn said she was drawn to the beautiful dialect and the poet’s use of imagery as well as the message of the poem which deals with learning to accept and finding comfort in the passage of time and the inevitability of death.
She chose each of the poems, the regional winner continued,” because they spoke to me in some way or another and made me think about the messages they conveyed.”
All of which brought her to the conclusion, that “In a way, these poems found me.”
—
Let Evening Come
By Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Copy right Jane Kenyon
