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Serena Baik &
Ellie Mendevil
Staff Writers
Arts
Come On and SLAM
The audience goes
wild with applause.
The teams roar encouragement from
the front rows. The
judges gasp and
murmur in awe.
Every poem performed on the
Webb Theater stage
seemed to have this
effect, no matter
who performed it—
but not simply for the
fun of poetry. Each
rhyme and metaphor
recited on March 7
was for the glory of
winning the Orange
County Regional
Youth Slam Event, or,
OC RYSE.
For OC RYSE’s second year, 12 teams
from six Southern
California high
schools competed
for honor, fame, and
prize money ranging
from $500 to $1000.
In the semifinal
and final rounds
students performed
a classic poem, such
as Charles Simic’s
“Stone,” then followed up with an
original poem in
response, like senior
Jade Matias-Bell’s
(CW) “A Brief List of
Similarities Between a
Girl and a Stone.”
To prepare the
OCSA students, Creative Writing teacher
Jennifer Carr, who
helped coach OCSA’s three teams,
said she “[tried] to
get them to act out
as opposed to giving out a speech, to
make it less about
orating and more
about performing.”
As a slam poetry
competition, students were judged
on more than their
accuracy; their performance skills and
delivery of both poems weighed heavily
into the scores.
Because of the
focus on the intersection of performance
and poetry, OC RYSE
grabbed the attention of many students
from non-arts public
schools, such as junior Carlisle Huntington from Dana Hills
High School.
In the first OC RYSE
competition last
year, Huntington
performed all eight
poems by herself
and placed third in
the final round. This
year she brought two
teams and managed
to bring o