Syosset High School sophomore Savir Peri took first place at the Poetry Out Loud state competition, marking the school’s fifth state champion in the competition’s 20-year history.
Peri, who will advance to the national championship in Washington, D.C., this May, was not the only school representative. Senior Lauren Whitley placed in the top five after earning first place in the regional competition.
“I’m really excited to be heading to D.C.,” said Peri, who participates on the school’s speech and debate team.
Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition that aims to bring poetry to life and create a sense of community, according to its website.
The state championship, which was held on Saturday, March 15, featured New York’s top 20 performers. Peri and Whitley both placed first in their regional competition, with Peri taking first in Nassau County and Whitley in Suffolk.
Peri and Whitley said they first heard about the competition from Syosset English teacher Lydia Esslinger.
“I’ve always been a fan of poetry,” Esslinger said. “So, for me, it was always a nice opportunity to do a deep dive.”
At the very beginning stages of the competition, each of the contestants received an anthology of hundreds of poems to choose from, something that Peri and Whitley said was both overwhelming and rewarding.
“Looking through all the poems really let me know what kind of poetry I liked,” Peri said.
For the competition, students are required to memorize and deliver three poems, including a pre-20th-century poem, a poem under 25 lines, and a free-choice poem. Esslinger said Peri and Whitley read through the anthology and wrote down different poems that they enjoyed.
“We just kept whittling the list down until each of them got to three that they really liked,” Esslinger said.
Whitley said she enjoyed reading poems with a performance aspect, especially those that could be delivered “like a story.”
Peri said he was drawn to poems he connected with on a personal level and could evoke emotions from the audience.
“A lot of the poems I really ended up liking reflected on my own experiences,” Peri said.
Looking back on the competition, Peri and Whitley said they learned how to better communicate with their audiences.
“I think this experience taught me how important it is to me, for me to be able to connect with the people I’m communicating with,” Peri said.
Whitley said she is proud that she was able to “collaborate” with the poet in a way that evoked emotion from the audience.
“As long as you are able to complete your job as a speaker of the poems and are able to get somebody sitting inside the audience to feel the exact thing that the poet was trying to convey with their poem, then in a way, you’ve succeeded,” she said.
This May, Peri will be headed to D.C. to compete in the national competition, competing against 54 other students from across the country and American territories.
State champions win $200, and the winner’s school receives $500 for the purchase of poetry materials, according to the program’s website. At the national finals, held in Washington, D.C., a total of $50,000 in awards are given to students and their schools, including a $20,000 award for the champion.
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