“I have a lot more hope for the future,” 

J.Rowe, one of the three guest teachers participating in Sunset High School’s Poetry Out Loud competition, came from the Sacramento area to teach poetry to local students. She is a social activist and spoken word artist who explores themes of empowerment, social justice and love through her poetry. The students at Sunset High have a lot of big ideas and the courage required to put those ideas into motion, she says. 

“These students I’ve been blessed to work with are very much ahead of their time.” Rowe told Redwood Voice Community News at the Poetry Out Loud Open Mic event Friday.

A similar sentiment was felt across the room. From older folks coming up to sing and speak their piece to the very youngest students coming up to speak poetry to the assembled group, there was an outpouring of hope at Seafront Baking Company on Friday. People filled up the back portion of the restaurant and few seats were open by the time the event started. The Open Mic was the afterparty of weeks of preparation for Poetry Out Loud, a national program of students participating in competitions from county to state and finally to a national level of competition. 

Poetry Out Loud in Del Norte County started in 2018 when DNACA contacted Kelly Troyna, a teacher at Sunset High School, about making Del Norte County a part of the program. 

“I said absolutely we should,” Troyna said. 

The next fall, Poetry Out Loud had a volunteer committee and the competition began in earnest. Since then, the students involved with Poetry Out Loud have been having field trips to our state capitol to get involved with poetry on the state level.

“[The 2018 champion] went to state and she performed three different poems. They have three different rounds at the state level and she got to go on to the third round which is on the floor of the State Senate.” Troyna said, “It’s a pretty incredible thing to be able to watch students perform, use their voices in a place where laws are usually passed.”

This year’s competition breaks Sunset High’s streak. Junior Melody Dawn Brennan is the first champion to hail from Del Norte High School. She became interested in Poetry Out Loud during her sophomore-year English class, where she would get extra credit for reciting a poem in front of her classmates. 

“I didn’t really understand what poetry was about, but then I went on that trip to Sacramento,” Melody told Redwood Voice Community News, “I realized it was way more involved and the words actually come off the page, not just like reading some script.”

Kelly Troyna and Andru Defeye are the leaders of this branch of Poetry Out Loud competition. Andru Defeye is a Sacramento poet laureate emeritus, and was one of the three guest teachers at Sunset High School during this year’s competition. He’s been working with Sunset High School for the past two years to teach poetry and its recitation as a part of Poetry Appreciation Week, which the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors proclaimed as ranging from Feb. 3 to Feb. 7, 2025. This is the second year the Board of Supervisors has proclaimed a Poetry Appreciation week, and Troyna intends to make this an annual tradition.

“Last year we got here and I felt like we were introducing poetry, especially the writing of your own poetry,” Defeye said. “When we got here this year there were already open mics happening in the city from some of the kids we were working with last year. The amount of young people that were reading their own work, and not just reading someone else’s work, was really amazing, and the community that’s starting to build around poetry and the young people in Crescent City — it’s really amazing.”

Melody and nine other students from Del Norte County will head to Sacramento to participate in the state-level competition on March 16th, and cheer our county champion on to, hopefully, the national competition. The three poems that Melody, our county champion, has lined up for state competition are: Invictus by William Ernest Henley, from The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg, and Love of My Flesh, Living Death by Lorna Dee Cervantes.

For more information about the state-level competition click here, and for more information about Poetry Out Loud as a national organization click here.