On Friday, February 14, the English Department hosted its second annual Freshman Poetry Slam. English teacher Jonathan Kwan hosted the event while four teachers and students, English teacher Caitlin Hannon, sophomores Emily Goto and Kalie Oku and a senior, judged the event.
This year’s participants were:
Jaclyn Saik
Derek Mark – 3rd place
Antonia Rahe
Stephanie Campos
Marisa McGettigan
Ginger Schmidt – 2nd place
Sean Adibi
Sione Moli
Veronica Hsu
Ruben Rojas
Thara Salim
Annie Souders
Emily Pye
Sophie Ianonne – 1st place – 2014 top poet
Octavio Guerrero
The annual Freshman Poetry Slam started last year, and has since been a successful event that coincides with the poetry unit all Survey of Composition and Literature classes have. Because of the poetry slam’s success, Kwan hopes that this will be an annual tradition in future years.
“There’s a lot of energy and spirit around poetry, and I was really surprised that there were so many kids that showed up to spend their lunch on Valentine’s Day,” Kwan said. “[The Poetry Slam] was a really really cool celebration of creative writing.”
