Matthew Campbell will be live on stage this weekend, carrying the banner for Wolf Nation.
The Coupeville High School sophomore held off nine other contestants to win a Poetry Out Loud competition, and now moves on to compete at regionals.
That event goes down Saturday at the Phil Tarro Theatre on Skagit Valley College’s Mount Vernon campus, with two finalists advancing to the state finals in March.
Nationals are typically held in Washington DC in late April or early May.
Poetry Out Loud was launched in 2006 by the National Endowment for the Arts, and draws contestants from all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The goal is to promote the art of performing poetry.
Washington state has a previous national champion, with Langston Ward of Spokane claiming top honors in 2013 for his recitation of “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee.
This year’s opening poetry rumble drew 10 Coupeville High School students, with Campbell, Sydney Wallace, and Cristina McGrath finishing in the top three.
Contestants memorized and performed two poems, and were graded on “physical presence,” “voice and articulation,” “dramatic appropriateness,” “evidence of understanding,” and “overall performance.”
Each performer was also checked for accuracy as they recited their poems.
Campbell is slated to perform the work of poets Jones Very and Richard Blanco at regionals.
The former, who died in 1880, was a “poet, clergyman, and mystic” who was also a huge Shakespeare fan boy, while the latter is still going strong, born in 1968 and noted for performing at Barack Obama’s second inauguration.
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