Personally, I’ve never been afraid of being loud and having my voice heard. This may seem to have no relation to Poetry Out Loud, but honestly, any special characteristic about you is what you portray to the audience. My name is Asiya Hassan; I currently attend Herricks High School and have competed in the 2015 Poetry Out Loud Regionals. My whole life I’ve been surrounded by poems that essentially steered my way through numerous obstacles. When I first heard about Poetry Out Loud, I was dumbfounded to hear that you didn’t need to write poems to compete, but rather you took the voice of another author and delivered their message. It was absolutely compelling and I was thrilled to hear that I had won my school’s competition. I picked the poem “Apollo” by Elizabeth Alexander for regionals because I felt that I could read it as if telling a story to someone, not just reading a poem. You see, the one thing I realized after competing is that Poetry Out Loud isn’t just about memorizing a few poems and reading them aloud to an audience, it’s about painting an image of a poem with the tone of your voice.
