His name is Rize Simmons and he can make a room sit down in silence. He can make a theater full of people shake on a soul level while they remain perfectly still, mesmerized by his movements and voice as he recites poetry by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Toi Derricotte and W.E.B. Du Bois. He doesn’t watch other poets before he recites, because he wants the performance to be his own — the emphasis, the way he raises and lowers his voice, the way he quickens his pace as a poem moves forward — all his own. He’s also 17 years old.
On Monday, the Windsor High School junior won the Colorado Poetry Out Loud competition, part of a national arts education program that provides poetry curriculum and hosts recitation competitions. The winners from each state — including Simmons — will compete for a $20,000 prize at the end of April in Washington, D.C.
The Randy Weeks Conservatory Theater at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts was full of nervous chatter and pop music at 9 a.m. before the competition began. Every time a song ended the talk turned to whispers. The students, anxious, wanted the competition to start. Then another song would play and conversations resumed. The students laughed about how little sleep they got the night before. “Two hours, insomnia, I was so nervous,” said Enrique Contreras-Mares, representing Fort Morgan High School. “I actually slept pretty well,” said Hana Kebede from Overland High School. “I got like four hours.”
Each contestant had two chances to impress a panel of five judges. One by one they approached the mic, took a deep breath and tuned into their poem. After each recitation the judges quickly ranked the performance in six categories: physical presence, voice and articulation, interpretation, evidence of understanding, accuracy and overall performance. After the first two rounds and a break for lunch, the three highest scorers got one more chance to recite. Then the winner was chosen.
“We change the room”
Performing the first poem is the hardest, the contestants all agreed. They take deeper breaths, they shut their eyes tightly. Some use the momentum of their introductions to launch right into the poem, denying themselves a moment to stop and think, or to overthink. Some of them glue their hands to their legs, some clench fists, others sway side to side. One forgets his lines.
By the second round the room has relaxed. The students have found their flows. Shivam Singh from Pine Creek High School, who paused in the middle of his first poem and almost walked offstage midway, grabbed the microphone confidently: “This the comeback,” he said, and proceeded to perfectly deliver “After the Winter” by Claude McKay. They unstuck their arms from their legs and gestured more freely. They gazed at the audience, made eye contact with the judges and looked theatrically toward the scaffolding on the ceiling of the small theater. The performances were, overall, more dramatic.
Contestants chose three poems from a catalog of over 1,200, ranging from pre-20th century to contemporary. Some competitors tried to balance their selections — Kebede read through dozens of poems before choosing her top three, careful not to repeat themes no matter how much she liked the poem. Others, like Simmons, looked for a thread that would tie his program together: “Music,” he said, without elaborating.
After each performance, while the judges deliberated, the competition’s emcee Dominique Christina, a dynamic slam poetry champion, fed the crowd bite-size monologues that could make the room laugh, clap and cry in the course of about 4 minutes. She riffed on mythology, astrology and volleyball. She recited Langston Hughes and Edgar Allen Poe, declared Percy Bysshe Shelley was “a trip” and that “Medusa would have been the homegirl.”
Over the course of the morning and early afternoon, Christina’s introductions of the poets grew increasingly absurd. During the first round, she introduced Simmons as the person who dreamed up the Nike swoosh. During the second round, she told the crowd that Rohan Kotwal of Rock Canyon High School invented rubber bands and flip-flops, and that Isabel Shaw of Valor Christian High School was a presidential hopeful who, because of her age, had to pick poetry over the presidency. Christina repeatedly cracked herself up with her hyperbole.
But she could also reel it in. She evangelized about the importance of art — “it can save your life,” she said at one point. After divulging information about the abuse she endured as a child, it seemed like one of the least-hyperbolic statements she made.
“A lot of people have trouble expressing words when it comes to their thoughts and feelings at this age, especially with all of the self-doubt we have and the society we’re living in today,” said Brynn Jensen, a 16-year-old competitor who represented Fountain Valley High School in Colorado Springs. “It’s really hard to try to come to terms with everything. So I think poetry is a way for me to express all of the things I can’t really say out loud.”
Jensen did end up expressing some of her thoughts out loud, on stage. During pauses between competition rounds, Christina coaxed Jensen and the other three poets up to perform their original poetry.
Lorena Orozco, 16, of Roosevelt High School, also recited an original piece that dealt with the grief of losing someone close to her. “I was so scared,” she said of the unplanned performance. “I was scared I was going to start crying. You know when you can feel that thing, that you’re going to start crying?” She asked, pointing at her throat. “Then I saw my mom wiping (her) eyes and I was like, ‘I have to get through this.’”
“I mentioned earlier, very briefly, the weight of the world, of the things we’re seeing, the images that cause us pain,” Christina said before the final round of competition. “Art is not your way around it, it’s your way through it.”
The judges tallied their scores during lunch and announced the top three competitors: Hana Kebede, Lorena Orozco and Rize Simmons. Each finalist had one more shot at the state title.
Kebede went first, reciting “The Light of Stars” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. To prepare for the competition, Kebede said she watched “hundreds of videos” of prior Poetry Out Loud competitions and slam poetry contests. She also practiced in front of her former teacher and speech and debate coach, who was in the audience at the state competition.
Orozco went next with “The Arrow and the Song,” also by Longfellow. This year was Orozco’s second appearance at the state finals. Before competing she watched videos of her performance last year and noticed that she looked nervous at some points, her goal was to come back with confidence. She also listened to a Spotify playlist that her dad found of Ignacio López Tarso, a telenovela star who played all kinds of characters throughout his career — the grandpa, the dead person, the villain, Orozco’s father said. She listened to the way that his tone and cadence could completely shift the mood in a room and draw the audience in.
Simmons performed last, “The Song of the Smoke” by W.E.B. Du Bois. The first time he competed in the state finals was two years ago as a freshman. Last year he messed up his poem during the school competition and blew the opportunity to move on. This year was “redemption,” he said after winning.
As state champion, Simmons was awarded $500 and an all-expenses paid trip with a chaperone to compete in the national finals. Windsor High School also received a $500 award to buy poetry materials.
“I don’t know what ordinary people be doing. I just know that we walk into rooms and we change the room,” Christina said, wrapping up the competition. “We walk into the room and we speak and things move, things shift, perspectives change, ideas are born or abandoned. Is that not deep? Ideas are born or abandoned in the work that we do.”