On Thursday, Nov. 20, the McIntosh English department held a Poetry Out Loud contest in the auditorium for students of any grade. The contest had a total of 19 students recite memorized poems of their choice.

Memorizing poems takes a lot more work than it seems. Junior Penelope Klein used a certain process to be able to successfully memorize as well as reciting her poem “Mountain Pines” by Robinson Jeffers.

“My process was to just find a poem that I felt passionate about. I’m really passionate about nature, and my poem was ‘Mountain Pines.’ My process basically was to go line by line and just read through it and feel that line and how it fits into the poem as a whole. Doing this and just reciting it over and over again really helped me solidify it. I’ve never done this before, so I really just did this for fun,” Klein said.

List of participants handed out at the contest.

While some people decided to participate in the contest just for the fun of it, others did it for personal benefit. Sophomore William Cook expresses his motivation for the contest.

“So what I did was I found a poem that I kind of liked, and so I just rehearsed it, memorized it and tried to capture what he felt when he was writing it, so that’s pretty much what I did to prepare. I’m honestly here to improve my public speaking and confidence on stage,” Cook said.

Rounding up the Poetry contest, the English department joined together to discuss who of the 19 participants would win it all. Reciting “O Captain! My Captain!” sophomore Maya Otico was selected as the 2025 Poetry Out Loud winner. Otico dives in deeper to what she believes helped her win.

“The meaning [of my poem] really stuck with me. I hope I was able to convey that in my recitation. I definitely associate certain words with certain emotions, and I remember not to be too stiff and more free and project my voice,” Otico said.

Otico is currently preparing herself for the Poetry Out Loud regional contest for Georgia. Otico shares what is going into the next steps of her process, in order to get to the next level.

“I know that there’s another competition in February, and I need to prepare a second poem. I’m probably going to continue to practice, in order to get better at recitation and hopefully win that competition as well. I’m really excited. I really like reciting poetry, I feel like it’s a good outlet for me to express myself,” Otico said.