By Zoe Gilbard
Staff Writer

After winning the school’s Poetry Out Loud competition, Kavita Oza ’14 advanced to and won the New Jersey State Championship on March 15, earning her a spot at the National Championships in Washington, D.C. last month. From the field of 53 state finalists, Oza was selected as one of nine contestants to compete in the National Finals on April 30.

Poetry Out Loud (POL) is a national poetry recitation contest that gives high school students in the United States the opportunity to perform and learn about poetry and to win grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation for their school’s poetry programs. Creative writing teacher Kate Westhaver decided to introduce the competition to the community this past year with the help of English teacher Chris Mixon.

“Competitions like POL are important because they allow students to embody their poetry,” Mixon said. “They can reimagine poems as their own and in doing so bring those words to life.”

According to the POL rubric, the contestants were judged on physical presence, articulation, dramatic appropriateness, level of difficulty and evidence of understanding. In D.C., Oza performed three pieces: ‘Ego’ by Denise Duhamel, ‘The Sun Rising’ by John Donne and ‘Testimonial’ by Rita Dove. Her performance of ‘Ego’ was filmed during the Princeton Poetry Festival and can be found on YouTube.

“No matter how much I deny it, I love being up on stage,” Oza said. “I love the feeling I get when I knew people either know exactly what I am talking about or don’t get it at all.”

Recently, Oza has gained an increased affection for poetry as well as performing.

“Although I disliked poetry at first, I think now I literally spend half my time reading and analyzing it,” Oza said. “It really isn’t as hard as I used to think it was. And it is useful, contrary to popular belief. I feel that the ability to understand and love poetry enables one to find beauty in the smallest things. When I read poetry, I try to internalize lines in a way that I can relate to all of them. Because nothing in poetry is clear, I can’t really love or hate a line; to me, they all have their own unique beauty.”

As the New Jersey state champion, Oza won an all-expense-paid trip to the National Championships in Washington D.C., where she was accompanied by her parents and Mixon, who praised her presentation.

“I thought Kavita’s performance was marked most by her maturity,” Mixon said. “She is clearly someone who has thought a lot about her work and engagement with the text.”

At the competition, Oza enjoyed her time on stage competing as well as offstage making new friends, and she encourages other Peddie students to participate in the competition next year.

“I became a performer and a lover of poetry after I started [doing] Poetry Out Loud,” Oza said. “The important thing is that you have to love what you are doing on stage. Passion and control are both very important.”