Whiz Kid: Poetic Woodbury Senior Ian Wesley Taylor, Jr.

senior Ian Wesley Taylor, Jr., has been busy lately.

He was named the winner of the 2011 Minnesota Poetry Out Loud competition on March 7, earning $200 and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the national Poetry Out Loud event for the chance to win a $20,000 scholarship. Additionally, Woodbury High School will receive a $500 to put toward the purchase of poetry books for its library.

The day after winning the Poetry Out Loud competition, Taylor left for the High School Mock Trial competition in Duluth, where he received the All-State Attorney Award from the Minnesota State Bar Association. Taylor plans on pursuing media law after high school.

Taylor said poetry is an artistic outlet.

“I’m not really involved in many artistic activities, so it’s been a way for me to expand my talents and experience,” he said. “I’m really excited for the competition and to bring my best as a poet.”

Poetry Out Loud is a national initiative aimed at sparking high school students' interest in poetry, performing, public speaking and a plethora of other skill-building activities. Participants select three poems to recite for judges, and they advance according to their strength. At the state level, the 18 participants performed their first poem, and six were cut. The remaining 12 performed a second poem, and six more were cut, leaving six to be judged for the final round.

While states can customize the program in some ways, Poetry Out Loud and Minnesota Senior Program Officer Amy Frimpong said that the program is fairly standard across the country, down to the poems that students choose.

“Students can only select poems from the printed anthology or from the list online,” Frimprong said. “It evolves every year—for example, Maya Angelou’s ‘May I Rise’ was recently retired.”

Poems are retired when they become too popular or there are copyright issues.

“They typically disallow poems from performance media because it’s too easy to become a copycat performer,” said Woodbury High School teacher and Poetry Out Loud coordinator Phil Bratnober. “It takes away from that search for authenticity.”

Taylor said he doesn’t feel that this process is overly restrictive.

“I’m attracted to poems by the title, then I read through it and get a sense of whether I have a connection with the poem,” Taylor said. “Sometimes I have an instant understanding, which helps. I also analyze the message of the poem, and decide whether or not I agree with it.”

The connection is an element that transcends the criterion on the judging score sheet.

“There must be that connection between a student’s voice and the conscience of the poem—for both the student and the judges, there’s a connection,” said Bratnober.

Bratnober has worked with the program for the past two years and coached Taylor a couple of times. He sees the merits of the program on multiple levels.

“It teaches students the importance of pausing, something that high school students rarely do,” Bratnober said. “They also learn vocal variety, tone, pitch, but they also begin to read poetry more because it suddenly becomes less effete and more accessible to them.”

This is the effect that Taylor was able to accomplish. Bratnober acknowledges that Taylor cultivated his poems on the strength of his own ability by finding sections that were personally appropriate—a statement Taylor’s mother, Gwender Sterling, agrees with completely.

“At the competition, I was mentally critiquing every word, every mannerism, but I was also mindful of the fact that it was completely unnecessary because he was already here,” Sterling said. “He is where he is because of all the work he’s put into this."

Studying the history and meaning of poems is part of the fun, according to Taylor, and for him, the fun will continue as he’s decided to switch up two of his poems. For the national competition, he will be performing “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg, “Invitation to Love” by Paul Laurence Dunbar, and “Song of the Smoke” to W.E.B. DuBois.

“I analyzed some of the finalists from the past and saw that a lot of their poems were longer, so they could express more emotion,” Taylor said, noting his main reason for throwing out Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream Within a Dream” and Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask.”

The ability to express emotion through words is the age-old goal of poetry. It’s necessary to read out loud to truly appreciate things like alliteration, sibilance, and rhyme schemes. The Poetry Out Loud competition takes poetry back to its spoken-word roots, and asks students to make connections beyond just words on a page.

“It takes poetry out of the silence and into our hearts,” Bratnober said. “When a student embraces the mind of the poem in his voice…something special happens.”

And as he prepares for his trip to Washington in April, Taylor said he hopes he inspires others to tap into their own creativity.

“I just want to encourage other kids my age and younger kids particularly to look at poetry, and dabble and write their own,” Taylor said. “It’s a healthy way to express yourself.”

Whiz Kid

Know a great kid who made Eagle Scout or did your child's youth team really step it up in the last tournament? They may be our next Patch Whiz Kid honoree.

Each week, Woodbury Patch will seek suggestions from readers for individual kids, youth groups, teens, and even sports teams that wow us with their accomplishments. We want to hear about these amazing children and teens and select one each week as the Patch Whiz Kid. Submit your nomination in our comment box below or e-mail the information to kris.janisch@patch.com. Be sure to include all of the following information:

• Nominator's Name
• Nominator's E-Mail
• Whiz Kid's Name
• Whiz Kid's Age
• Whiz Kid's School
•  Whiz Kid's Accomplishment
• Whiz Kid's Key to Awesomeness (what made him/her successful?)

If your nominee is selected, we'll contact you and assign a photographer to take a photo. For more information, email kris.janisch@patch.com.