Roughly 10 Leland students competed in a poetry recital competition called ‘Poetry Out Loud’ Monday in front of peers and teachers.
All students tried their best and displayed powerful public speaking and memorization skills.
Leland junior Eliza Aldridge won the competition and will be heading to the state meet later this year to compete for the state crown.
“I definitely wasn’t expecting to win it at all. This is a really exciting moment for me and I’m really excited to uphold the legacy that Ingrid who was winner last year and all of the people before me that went to the state competition,” she said.
Aldridge performed ‘First Vote’ by Kamilah Aisha Moon, and ‘The Conqueror Worm’ by Edgar Allen Poe.
“I’m quite nervous (about states) and I have to pick a new poem to learn before that so that is something I have to start working towards but it will be a fun experience to just go down there,” Aldridge said.
The poetry competition is in partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and state and jurisdictional arts agencies. Poetry Out Loud provides teachers and organizers with free lesson plans and other educational materials, including an online anthology of 1,200 classic and contemporary poems.
Awards and placements are determined solely by judges’ scores based on the Poetry Out Loud Evaluation Criteria. Since the program began in 2005, more than 4.4 million students and 81,000 teachers from 20,000 schools across the U.S. have participated in Poetry Out Loud.
Leland junior Ingrid Paciorka recites a poem during a poetry competition Monday. Paciorka finished second at the state competition last year. Enterprise photos by Brian Freiberger
Leland junior Eliza Aldridge won the 2025 Poetry Out Loud contest and clinched her ticket to the state competition.
