It was another evening filled with hunger for the people’s voices to be shouted out and heard with encouragement front the audience at the Seventh Semi-Annual Poetry Night Contest on Thursday, Nov. 21.
The MC’s were president of the Library Club, Jessica Angiuano, and Hannah Luong. The Poetry Contest was based on both originality and presentation.
Each poet had to come up with there own poem and it had to be under seven minutes.
Judges for the evening included foreign languages professor Froylan Cabuto and English professors Chad Greene, Frank Gaik and Linda Palumbo.
Enthusiasm and Presentation was the main focus for the judges’ scoring.
Cabuto said that he was very excited for the Poetry Night since it was the biggest event yet.
According to Greene, “The number of student participants have nearly doubled. It might be possible that more and more students are coming out and participating more due to the “open mic.””
Judges hints on leads for who took the contest home were, people with best delivery and passion but were very hard to score because everyone had good potential.
First place went to Ian Adams who dashed before the winners were announced.
For third place and winner of $25 went to English major Desiree Lee for her “Prevarication” poem.
Lee’s said about her third place award, “Poetry is what i love to do. Last spring semester, I entered the poetry night contest. When I received the email for it, I was really, really excited to participate.”
Andrew Henry, English major, was the second place winner for his poem. His reaction to placing second place, “It’s cool, I like it. I’ve competed before, (I) don’t remember which semester but I always enjoyed it.”
His inspiration came from the fear of standing in front of an audience and speaking out what he wrote.
A student congratulated him on his poem after the contest.
There were also two Honorable Mention Awards beforehand that were given to Malory Padilla for her “Aguas Calientes” poem, and Alberto Loaiza for his ‘ I fell in love with fire” poem.