Students give voice to poems they love

The girl from Rockland High School had the timing, getting laughs for a poem about lost memories that ''decided to retire . . . to a little fishing village where there are no phones." The boy from Codman Academy, survivor of a stabbing and a car accident, had the drama, reciting a poem in which death is a shadow whose ''visits are dreadfully frequent."

But, in the end, a Boston Latin student -- dressed, appropriately, in black -- won Massachusetts' first poetry recitation contest yesterday with his rendition of Allen Ginsberg's ''A Supermarket in California." Judges said Vinh Hua held them spellbound with his energetic recitation of the beat poet's work and two other complex poems he had memorized for the contest.

''I come from Dorchester, and sometimes it's like, 'You're into poetry, dude?' But this is what I do," said Hua, himself a poet and a member of the Worcester Youth Poetry Slam Team, which stages public poetry demonstrations.

The ''Poetry Out Loud" contest, which climaxes with the national championship in Washington, D.C., on May 16, attempts to capitalize on the popularity of rap and hip-hop by encouraging teenagers to learn and perform great poetry by legends such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Maya Angelou. Performers take the stage alone with no notes or props, relying on voice, hand gestures, and body language to convey the poem's meaning.

''So much time in high school is devoted to who's the best basketball player or who's the best football player. This, to me, is the kind of thing we should be worrying about our children being able to do," explained Steve Roop, one of the judges and a trustee of the Huntington Theatre, which took the lead in organizing the event.

The Massachusetts contest, held yesterday morning at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End, drew representatives from 12 schools, but organizers hope the event will grow in future years as word spreads. Already, they note, there is a lively poetry scene at many schools such as Abington, where nearly 100 students competed to represent the school at yesterday's event.

Many of the competitors said they loved poetry long before the contest. Joao Fernandes, a freshman at Codman Academy Charter School in Dorchester, said he arrived late because he overslept after staying up to memorize ''A Shadow Unknown," a poem about the specter of death. Fernandes was hit by a car in the third grade and stabbed in the lung last year, which, he said, gave the piece deep meaning to him.

''I look at it not as reading, but as acting a part of my life," said Fernandes, a cheerful 17-year-old dressed in a rumpled white shirt and baggy jeans. ''People look at me like I'm an angel. After all the struggles, I'm still here."

Sam Dailey, the Watertown high school student who led off the competition with a poem about a mother's loss of her son, immediately worried that he had been too understated as he watched the other performers gesticulate, kneel, and swing their hips to add emphasis.

Others felt insecure about their choice of material. Meaghan Michelson, an Everett High School student who finished second behind Hua, feared that her performance of the children's classic ''The Spider and the Fly," was too simple and silly compared to the heavier material others selected. Michelson said, ''my legs were shaking when I did the spider."

The 75 people in the audience seemed to recognize immediately that Hua was the poet to beat. The poems he performed were not only longer than most of the others, but they contained complex mood changes. ''A Supermarket in California" veers between the comedy of an imagined meeting with 19th-century poet Walt Whitman and an acid criticism of consumerism, and Hua managed to elicit both laughs and disgust in his rendition.

Gabrielle Guarracino, of Rockland High School, who performed ''Forgetfulness," finished fourth in the contest while Jessica Wong, of Malden High, was third.

For winning, Hua received $200 for himself, $500 for his school to buy poetry books, and a free trip to Washington for the championship.

Scott Allen can be reached at allen@globe.com.