On March 16 and 17, Freshman Britta Stearns placed 9th at the state competition, advancing to semifinals, at the state speech and debate tournament at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins in interpretive poetry.

“We take published works and pieces and we practice them and we try to memorize them to perform them,” said Britta. The process involves a cutting of the pieces to fit in a 7 to 10 minute period, according to her coach Ms. Oakes.

According to Britta, she competes in this event because “it kind of gave me something to do, something to level out my energy on.”

Her coach said the event is “judged by a lot of different things: by the way that the person interprets it, hand gesture, vocal quality….how well it relates to the audience….there is a specific ballot for the things the judges are looking for” according to Ms. Oakes.

The evaluation of the judge can be based on personal views, their experiences, and their background.

“There are guidelines, but of course it is subjective.”

“Some of it does come to [their] judge and the type of poems they like and so forth.”

To help the students who do this event, she says she tries to “see what type of poetry the competitors like, and then they’ll either find some and I’ll take a look at is and say ‘yes, this looks good’ or give them some direction….as far as what type of poems they want or what authors are good.”

Britta came to her coach with several poems she liked, based on a poem Oakes had shared with her before. According to her coach, “the way we put it together is a new process that is kind of weaving the different poems in and out of each other. So instead of presenting one of the poems, and then another, and another, she started to present one of the poems and then weaved one of the other poems into that, and then came back to the original poem.”

Britta’s achievements are remarkable for her first year doing the event.

 “She will just be getting better,” said her coach.