By Hallie Peacock
For Finley Altman, winning La Cueva’s Poetry Out Loud contest was something she didn’t expect. But the senior, in a recent competition in the school library, took first place out of more than 20 students.
By winning, Altman advanced to this month’s state competition in Santa Fe. In Poetry Out Loud, students are judged by their pronunciation, accuracy and emotional execution as they recite a poem from memory. If she does win, she will earn $200 and will gain $500 for the school for future poetry materials.
For the school contest, Altman recited “Truth is I would like to escape myself” by Nour Al Graowi and “How to triumph like a girl” by Ada Limón.
For Altman, being in front of crowds on stage comes naturally, mainly because she’s been dancing since she was two. But she doesn’t just go in cold, she practices her poems every night as well as looking into the deeper meaning of a work.
Reciting poetry has different values and meanings for everyone, but for her it’s a way to show who you really are. “I think the value of being able to recite poetry is to express yourself in different ways,” said Altman.
She also said that her motivation for pursuing poetry comes from her teachers, and that she is grateful for their encouragement and push to do the contest.
Martha Bedeaux, La Cueva’s testing coordinator and one of the contest judges, said some poets were accurate, some owned their poems, but very few did both. She said Altman was one of the few who stood out from others because she owned the poem and had the accuracy and precision required.
But she’s not just the Poetry Out Loud winner, she also works at the Jewish Community Center in the daycare, is a Hebrew teacher at congregation B'nai Israel, and an intern for Guardian Ad Litem Laura Cass. She hopes to attend the University of Wisconsin after graduation, majoring in political science and minoring in business.