On December 12th at 8 a.m. An announcement came on the speaker calling all participants who were reading poetry out loud, and all the students who wanted to watch the competition to go down in the auditorium. As the auditorium filled with students, contestants were going over their poems for the final time.
Leading up to the school competition, each English class had a classroom contest to see who would compete in front of the school. If students didn’t have a first-semester English class, they had the option to compete in front of Ms. Smith-Montogomery, who runs the schoolwide competition. Out of the Fifteen selected, only thirteen read in front of the school due to sickness. The order of people competing:
Those who judged were James Truax as the accuracy judge, who is a current English teacher at Weir, Kelly Lawton, an assistant principal at Weir, and Deb Marino and Dwight McUmar, both used to be English teachers at Weir.
At the end of the competition, they announced the top three contestants. Gigi Mastrantoni placed third, with Jenna Burket right in front, and for the second year in a row, Sienna Finsley was awarded first place.
All the top three will be returning next year, as Mastrantoni is a freshman, Burket a sophomore, and Finsley a junior. So, when asked about plans going forward, Mastrantoni said, “My plans for preparation would most likely be to find a different poem that I relate to, and I can express myself through more.”
The winner, Finsley, read Thats My Heart Right There by Willie Perdomo in the first round, and in the second round, she read Bereavement by William Lisle Bowles. She said the reason she picked these poems was because “I didn’t get to do my third poem when I went to states last year so I ended up picking that one from last year and I did another one from last year because it was one, I really liked.”
