First area ‘Poetry Out Loud’ contest brings out the best from local teens

Dressed in brilliant shades of blue to show school pride, four Burchell High School girls braved the Colony High stage Wednesday night to compete against eight other Valley students in the area’s first regional Poetry Out Loud contest.

With a top prize of a $20,000 scholarship to the winner of the national competition in Washington, D.C., in April, one Mat-Su student would be going to Juneau later this month to compete in the state Poetry Out Loud event.

The winner of the state event will represent Alaska at the national competition. This was the first year Mat-Su schools had enough students entering the poetry recitation competition to hold its own contest — instead of sending students to join the Anchorage School District in its regional contest.

Colony High had held its own school-wide contest last week and whittled down its 46 entrants to the top six to join the four from Burchell and two from Twindly Bridge Charter School on the CHS theater stage.

A total of 4,754 students from 109 classrooms in Alaska vied to compete in the state’s nine regional contests this month, according to Alaska Arts Council Program Coordinator Jeste Burton.

Burton said this was the best showing of Alaska students in the contest to date.

“I’m so frickin’ proud of us, guys,” red-headed teen Allie Harrington said to fellow Burchell students Kat Chudnofsky, Ashlee Twiford and Lillith Shannon as they anxiously waited to find out if any of them had placed in the top three for the Mat-Su Region. “We brought it! And we didn’t even have a coach for most of the time we were getting ready.”

Only the top point getter would be sent to Juneau. But none of that seemed to matter to most of the contestants and their supporters that night.

“This is kind of a high-stakes competition, but despite that, the collegiality and camaraderie and support they all showed for each other was really remarkable,” local contest host Joe Nolting, a retired teacher of 30 years, said Thursday morning. “It was just kind of heart-warming for me.”

So when it was announced that Colony High sophomore Whitney Winders, 15, was the winner, all the Burchell girls and most of the others competing against her stormed the stage to give her a giant group hug.

Winders’ father, Paul Winders, hung back in his seat, taking pictures of his daughter with his iPhone as her 11-year-old sister, Naomi, ran toward the stage to greet Whitney when she finally made it down to floor level — still surrounded by the Burchell clan.

He said his daughter would be “super busy” this month, traveling all over the country for various school-related events.

“She’s very passionate in everything she does and she excels in just about everything she tries,” he said. “But this was a tough competition. She still had to fight for it. I’m very proud of her.”

Whitney said after finally joining her father and sister in the theater that she was a little afraid of Magnolia Cook of Twindly Bridge. Cook ended up placing third with her poems “Agoraphobia,” by Linda Pastan, and “Fire and Ice,” by Robert Frost.

“I was actually pretty surprised I won,” said Whitney, who’d recited “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” by Wilfred Owen, and “Who Understands Me But Me,” by Jimmy Santiago Baca. “You can’t hear yourself up there and I was really intimidated by Magnolia. I thought she did really well with the emotions of her poems.”

Hanging in the back of the theater were the parents of Burchell’s Kat Chudnofsky. It’s fair to say they were as equally as proud of their daughter.

Although Kat did not place in the top three and likely ended up at the bottom of the pack because of her inability to finish her second poem, Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty” on her first attempt, she displayed an amazing amount of character for getting back out there for a “take two” granted to her by the four judges.

“That’s our girl,” Kat’s mother, Tonya, said. “She’s not one to just give up. We’re very proud of her for even being here.”

After freezing in the middle of her recitation and running off stage, Nolting and her fellow Burchell contestants went to her aid back stage as the audience waited quietly.

Nolting said Thursday he’d had an interesting conversation with Kat back there.

“I found her to be a very determined young woman,” Nolting said. “When I got back stage, she said, ‘Look at me. I’m a wreck.’ I said, ‘We all are. What does that have to do with getting up there and doing this?’ She just said, ‘OK then,’ and that was it. To see the love and support of her from everyone there was so cool. I think Kat got as much positive acknowledgement as if she had won the thing.”

The Burchell clan was sure that if they’d only had more time to prepare for the contest, they would have done better. Lillith Shannon, for instance, only had about 24 hours to memorize two poems — one of them the rather lengthy “Annabel Lee,” by Edgar Allen Poe.

When Kat was still trying to collect herself back stage, Shannon agreed to let her go last and told the audience she was dedicating her performance to Kat.

Although Shannon only made it through about half of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, she laughed later, “I’m sure it was my awesome dedication of my half a poem that really got Kat through this.”

At the end of the two-hour event, when all certificates and awards had been presented, the Burchell girls exchanged cell phone numbers with Whitney Winders and agreed to meet for ice cream at Red Robin.

Winders said she felt she’d made a few new friends.

“They were so encouraging to everyone,” Winders said as she prepared to leave the theater. “We’re all in the same boat when it comes to poetry competitions.”

For more information on the national Poetry Out Loud competition, visit poetryoutloud.org or contact Alaska State Council on the Arts in Juneau at 907-586-2787.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.