Cyndi Loza

Reciting a poem is harder than it looks.

“The way you have to do it is make the audience understand the meaning of the poem,” said 18-year-old Dillon Oberhansli, “because sometimes it’s not quite clear to everyone what it is about and sometimes it has a deeper meaning than what you read.”

Oberhansli is a home-schooled high school student from Hawthorne.

“I think I can do pretty good with helping say it in a way they will understand it.”

Oberhansli will be representing Mineral County on Saturday in the third annual State Finals Competition of the Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest at the Redfield Proscenium Theater on the University of Nevada, Reno campus. Fifteen high school students from across the state will be competing in the event from noon to 2:30 p.m., which will be followed by a reception.

“I think that the program is very valuable to students because not only does it introduce them deeply into poetry but it gives them the opportunity to essentially perform them as they recite them,” said Jill Berry, president of the Nevada Alliance for Arts Education.

The student semi-finalists represent 15 of the 16 school districts in Nevada that have high schools.

For the contest, each student is required to prepare three poems from an anthology of poems selected by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

All 15 students will recite one poem in the first round of the contest and one poem in the second round. Only three students will advance to the third round.

During each round, judges will score students on physical presence, voice and articulation, level of difficulty, evidence of understanding, overall performance, accuracy and appropriateness of dramatization.

“To understand (poetry) and have it all together to perform it with feeling takes an enormous amount of discipline,” Berry said.

Sparks contestant Andie Marken said she hopes her love for poetry and writing will help her overcome stage fright.

“It’s really nerve-racking and scary — I mean, I wake up (at night), and I have nightmares about it,” said Marken, 16, who also is home-schooled. “But it’s very exciting.”

Jake Reid, last year’s state winner, said he enjoys the contest because it reignites an interest in poetry in Nevada students.

“I think people tend to regard (poetry) as a lost and kind of boring art because you hear it recited by an English teacher or something,” said Reid, 17, a senior at Douglas County High School. “But when you hear kids recite it, it breathes new life into the art itself, and it proves that it is not dead and that poetry can still be very relevant to our lives.”

Nevada schools also have an incentive to have their students win this Saturday. Berry said $2,000 will be awarded to the school libraries of the first, second and third place winners.

If the winners are home schooled, the libraries closest to their address will receive the money.

“Find me a librarian who doesn’t want $2,000 in their library and I will sell you swampland in Las Vegas,” Berry said.