Full Title: “Niles West’s Yohanna Endashaw becomes Illinois state champ at Poetry Out Loud, plans to continue (via Chicago Tribune)”
Yohanna Endashaw, a rising junior at Niles West High School from Morton Grove, sees poetry as a way to “talk about the things you’re facing — the stories you need to get out.”
That love of reading and reciting poetry led to her winning top honors as the Illinois Poetry Out Loud champion this spring
Poetry Out Loud is a poetry recitation contest for high schoolers organized by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The competition begins at the school level and has regional and state levels before culminating at the national finals, which took place last month.
Endashaw, an aspiring neuroscientist, prepared for the competition between volleyball and basketball practices, and homeroom mentorship, and literacy center tutoring, and debate and playing viola in the school orchestra. She spoke to Pioneer Press with a canvas tote bag with “POETRY” printed on it crumpled at her feet as she discussed the three works she recited in Springfield.
The poems are Margaret Atwood’s “Siren Song,” Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” and Tiana Clark’s “My therapist wants to know about my relationship to work.”
All three pieces are meaningful to Endashaw in different ways, she said. She finds humor in Atwood’s narration of a bored siren, forever perched on a rock in the epic poem “The Odyssey.”
Click here for more information.
Links:
Chicago Tribune | Poetry Out Loud
