Amina, a first-year student at UWC‑USA, spent this past weekend in Albuquerque at the New Mexico Poetry Out Loud state finals, reciting a poem she selected and then rehearsed over many weeks. While she will not advance to the national competition in Washington, D.C., she says the experience confirmed why she loves poetry in the first place. For Amina, poetry is a way to slow down and “listen hard to someone else’s life,” then find the places where that life overlaps with your own.
She first entered Poetry Out Loud through the school‑level competition at UWC‑USA, drawn by the chance to live inside a poem long enough to understand its music and its silences. Preparing for the state finals meant practicing not just memorization, but breathing, pacing, and eye contact—skills the statewide program highlights as key benefits of poetry recitation for high school students. Amina says that work has changed how she reads, how she speaks in front of others, and even how she participates in class discussions.
Poetry Out Loud, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and state arts agencies, is designed to “lift poetry off the page, creating community and connection,” a mission Amina takes seriously. She believes poetry can help people face difficult histories, grief, and injustice without looking away, and that reciting poems aloud makes those conversations more public and more honest. Chris Rogers, the UWC‑USA faculty advisor for Poetry Out Loud, sees that commitment in her performances. “Amina doesn’t just recite,” he says. “She invites the room into the poem. You can feel people leaning in, recognizing something of themselves in the words she has chosen to carry.”