What you should expect to get out of this event:

1. You will enjoy some very good literature, making it "yours" in a special way.
2. You will enjoy coming to understand and appreciate what makes it good.
3. You will enjoy sharing your story and your insights with audiences.
4. You will learn greater control of your voice and body, making both more expressive.
5. You will learn self-control and poise under pressure.
6. You will learn to become a better observer of the word around you, as you stay alert for clues that will make you a better interpreter.
7. You will come to a better understanding of yourself, as you search your own experience to help you understand and convey your chosen reading.
8. You will learn to "control a room" with your performance.
9. You will learn a lot by watching excellent interpreters.

Special features of this event in competition:

Good Poetry Interpretation has quite a different sound from Prose. Poetry is usually compact, with much feeling and emotion in each phrase and line. It takes great care and skill to convey to a listener everything that is there. POE is usually a fairly large event, but not as big as PRO.

What you will do to become competitive in this event:

Initial preparation: about 3 weeks

1. select the Poetry event (2-3 days)
2. find a good poem, of right length or several shorter poems by the same author or several shorter poems on one theme. (2-3 days)
3. rough cut to approach time limit (1-2 day)
4. type onto computer disk (1 day)
5. final cut to about 7-8 minutes (1 day)
6. print-out into competition book (1 day)
7. preliminary analysis of material (2-3 days)
8. early rehearsals (4-5 days)
9. compose introduction and transitions (brief!)
10. polishing rehearsals (4-5 days)

Between-tournament preparation:

1. Possible recutting to improve selection or timing
2. Possible revision of introduction and transitions
3. Continuing analysis and rehearsals

Hints for finding material:

Page through poetry anthologies, and see what interests you. If you find a key poem you want to do, but need more to fill out your program, you can find other poems by the same author by using library indexes and catalogs. Or if you want to build your program around a theme, use the Granger's Index to Poetry (in library reserve section) which lists poems by topic. It takes a little work to track down the poems that are indexes there, so plan to spend several hours in the library, or even to order books of poetry through interlibrary loan. Putting together a good poetry program can be interesting, fun and satisfying.