The Belmont Hill community gathered once again on Friday morning, April 19th, for the 30th annual PoetryFest, a celebration of poems that has become an established tradition at our school. When asked about his thoughts on this event, Daniel Chen ‘26 stated: “I really enjoyed the variety in the poems that were performed. My favorite was Adrian Tan’s Raven.” Students are assigned to memorize a poem, and then deliver it in front of their class. Following the in-class round, those with the best recitations deliver their poems to judges in the semifinalist round. Those who emerged victorious from the semifinalist round delivered their poems at the Friday chapel in the finalist round.
Although all ten competitors presented their poems well, the panel of judges recognized four with “Distinctive Recitations.” The first among these was Alex Chen ’27, who performed “Paper People,” a poem by Harry Baker featuring lots of tongue-twisting alliteration involving the letter “p” and social justice themes intertwined throughout. Alex Laidlaw ’25, soon-to-be class president and editor-in-chief of this newspaper, was similarly awarded for his forceful performance of “Let America be America Again” by Langston Hughes. This poem, which was written in 1936, powerfully invokes themes from the civil rights era, arguing that the “American dream” could never be attained without equal rights regardless of race. The next of the winners, Yusuf Roba ’29, followed up by delivering “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, a poem relating to courage in the face of death. Finally Adrian Tan ’25, the last of the four, closed out with his presentation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” This famous poem consisted of over 1000 words and took over 7 minutes to present in front of the school community, an impressive feat of memorization on the part of Adrian. The judges also gave an honorable mention to Yareh Constant ’25 for his recitation of “My Shot,” a song composed by Lin Manuel-Miranda for the Hamilton musical.
The Panel congratulates these winners and looks forward to hearing more poetry at next year’s Poetry Fest!
