LAKEPORT — The Soper Reese on Main Street was empty late last week except for four people: Tim Barnes, drama teacher at Clear Lake High School and Terrace Middle School, Laura Ewing Barnes, a teacher at Kelseyville Elementary, Calliope Klemme a senior at Clear Lake High School plus Jeremiah French the lighting technician and general manager of the theater.
Klemme is the winner of the local 2022 Poetry Out Loud Competition (POL). To continue on to the state level, Klemme needed to record three memorized poems, chosen from a list on the Poetry Out Loud website.
The Soper Reese has been closed for the duration of the pandemic, but with the masking protocol being lightened, Tim Barnes was able to utilize the theater to record Klemme‘s three poems that will be submitted for the State Poetry Out Loud competition.
Klemme will be competing against 55 other California counties for the state competition. “Technically this is my third Poetry Out Loud competition,” Klemme said, “since there was no drama program my junior year, we didn’t have a drama teacher during that quarantine period. COVID sure made the process a bit strange. This year, the county competition being on Zoom was rather disappointing, as was the state competition relying on video submissions. However, I like to consider myself adaptable.”
Drama coach Barnes spoke about how COVID affected POL, “One of the biggest difficulties was getting students to buy into another online event. The kids, from my perspective, are ready to do things live again. After having two shows canceled due to COVID it was difficult to get volunteers. I think we would’ve had more participants had it been live. There was the lingering feeling of putting in the effort into a project and having no performance payoff.“
Standing on the bare stage, against the blue-curtained background (made even bluer by lighting tech French) Barnes listened intently to Klemme recite the poems while Laura Barnes checked the words of the poem to make sure there were no mistakes. The rules of POL as stated by its website: “At the state and national finals, students must have three poems prepared. One must be 25 lines or fewer, and one must be written before the 20th century. One poem may be used to meet both criteria and may be the student’s third poem.”
“Competing statewide is a lot more pressure than locally, since there were only four competitors in Lake County and now I’m competing against 55 other kids,” said Klemme.
The poems Klemme chose were “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde, “Flowers” by Cynthia Zarin and “The Hospital Window” by James L. Dickey.
“I look for poems that speak to the human experience,” said Klemme. “In my experience, the best poems are the ones talking about grief or despair, because it’s so much more raw of a feeling, and it produces such a higher intensity in the artwork itself. I also choose poems based on my own relatability, since it allows me to draw more emotion from them. I picked ‘Flowers’ because it spoke to me of mourning. My longtime friend of many years passed last year during the quarantine. I felt as though I could emphasize on that grief. ‘Hanging Fire’ was chosen because it hangs on that childlike desperation and fear of wanting your mother to look at you again, to see you. I pulled my own feelings of being abandoned by my mother to my advantage. And lastly, ‘The Hospital Window’, this poem is apprehensive, it’s about coping with the oncoming death of your father. This poem is unique from the others. When I read it, it was so powerful to me that I felt for the person who wrote it. The emotional ride this poem takes us on is truly phenomenal.”
Klemme spoke about memorizing a poem, “I say each line once, and then I repeat it over and over again, each time enunciating a different word. If a poem is giving me some real grief, I’ll write it out and repeat it while I do so.”
Laura Barnes also spoke about memorizing a poem. “The requirement to memorize the poems word-for-word is incredibly difficult. Substituting ‘a’ for ‘the’ or ‘this’ for ‘that’ can mean the difference between a win and a loss in this competition. This is much tougher than memorizing lines for a play, where you have co-actors onstage with you, who can often help, lead you to a lost line if you need it. With poetry recitation, you’re on your own entirely. Callie chose long, emotional, and challenging pieces and should be commended for that.”
“Poetry Out Loud,” said Barnes, “is an excellent way for students to broaden their horizons, getting to recite poetry with subject matter they wouldn’t usually come across in a classroom setting. It can also be very rewarding to choose a challenging piece, struggle with it, and ultimately own it.” Klemme said, “The final adjudication is on March 11. I’m pretty nervous about it, but also really excited to see where the competition goes from here.”
The POL website states, “All 55 state and jurisdictional finalists will participate in the national semifinals that will stream on Sunday, May 1, with the top nine students advancing to the national finals, that will stream on Sunday, June 5. Both the semifinals and finals will be streamed at arts.gov.”
