Ohio Student Wins National Poetry Out Loud
"How can I be a bridge between the audience and the poem?" was the question that guided Jackson Hille, winner of the 2006 National Poetry Out Loud Recitation Competition.
With support from the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Ohio students in the Capital region encountered poetry with a new depth last spring as they participated in Poetry Out Loud, a national poetry recitation competition sponsored by the NEA and the Poetry Foundation. Jackson Hille of Ohio, a senior at Columbus Alternative High School, was judged the winner on May 16 at the historic Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C.
Hille received a $20,000 scholarship. His journey started with his English teacher's suggestion that he participate in Poetry Out Loud for extra credit.
Jackson's ability to, as one Ohio judge describes it, "embody a poem" won him a spot in the state finals, held on April 29 at the Southern Theater in Columbus. Since his win in Washington, he has appeared on National Public Radio, visited with U.S. Representatives Deborah Pryce and Patrick J. Tiberi, and received congratulations and autographed books from a number of poets, including Billy Collins and Molly Peacock. He starts this fall at Otterbein College in Ohio.
For both the state and national competitions, students recited three poems from memory, adding whatever gestures, facial expressions, cadences, vocal techniques, and other touches were needed to illuminate and interpret the poems they chose. Ohio's second and third prizes went to Meredith Smith of Thomas Worthington High School and Robert Jones of Eastmoor Academy High School. Judges were David Hassler, poet, OAC Arts Learning artist, and director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University; Dionne Custer, educator for school programs at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus; and Ann Townsend, poet and director of Denison University's creative writing program.
This article was published in May 2006, Volume 2, Issue 3.
