Published: May 12, 2008 12:19 pm            

Student uses talent for poetry

• SHS senior makes it to finals in the national Poetry Out Loud contest

All the world’s indeed a stage for Hannah Roark.

The vivacious 18-year-old senior at Stillwater High School began acting young, took some time off then picked up the bug again in high school. Starting in January, she combined her love of acting with her love of literature and joined the Poetry Out Loud contest.

The three-year-old competition (www.poetryoutloud.org), sponsored by the National Arts Endowment and the Poetry Foundation, has high school students memorize, interpret and perform poems for judges who determine the winner at multiple levels.

Having never heard of Poetry Out Loud before Sally Walkiewicz, her advanced placement English teacher, held a contest at SHS, Roark won the school contest, the regional contest, the state contest and, on April 29, was among the final 12 at the national contest.

It took a lot of work to get to that point. Roark spent months researching the authors of poems so she could interpret them. She had to memorize the poems — “Fever 103” by Sylvia Plath, “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll and “When I have Fears that I may cease to be” by John Keats — and develop her own interpretation of each. But there also is some natural talent involved.

“Hannah is just a gifted actress,” Walkiewicz said. “She competed at the very highest levels. There was just one girl who I thought was better, and that was the girl who won (Shawntay Henry of the U.S. Virgin Islands).”

Walkiewicz, who made the trip to the finals in Washington, D.C., with Hannah and her parents, Joel and Terri Roark, has taught Roark the past two years.

“She is unbelievably open to criticism, hard working, just an absolutely delightful, delightful student,” Walkiewicz said. “Creative, imaginative, willing to put a lot of time in on something.”

Her success in Poetry Out Loud almost didn’t happen. After drifting away from acting when she was young, Roark signed up for a class at Stillwater High her sophomore year, but then nearly dropped the class without ever attending because she wasn’t sure she wanted to act.

“Now I realize that if I had switched out of that class, I would have missed out on the majority of what I have loved about high school,” she said. “Drama helped me learn more about myself and gave me the confidence to pursue other experiences like Poetry Out Loud.”

That confidence helped her to interpret the poets in a manner that may seem contrary. She wanted to show that “Jabberwocky” was funny, not scary, and bring some depth to the sad caricature of Plath, who committed suicide.

“I wanted to show the hurt and vulnerable side of Sylvia Plath, instead of just the mentally ill, angry, depressed, monotone woman,” Roark said. “I’ve always loved stories about people, and I got really into the (poets’ lives). I felt like they deserved to have their feelings interpreted, to be taken seriously.”

Roark not only impressed the judges at each step in the competition, she has impressed her family.

“Talking with her about her poems and watching her through the experiences she’s had and the appreciation that she has developed has been inspiring to us,” Terri Roark said. “It’s been a wonderful time for the whole family.”

Roark, whose family includes brothers Graham Nelson, 22, and Griffith Roark, 16, and grandparents Dale and Joyce Roark and Gary and Linda Stewart and the late Fayenelle Stewart, will graduate from SHS in a couple of weeks and will be headed to the University of Kansas in the fall. She plans to have a dual major — theater and film, and art history — with a minor in English.

“I’m interested in everything,” she said, laughing. “Narrowing down has been hard.”

Roark will leave behind much of her support network — family, Walkiewicz, theater teachers Michelle Hendrix, Lisa Larios and Jeri Seefeldt — when she heads north in the fall. But going with her will be her talent and her interest in not only words, but the people who wrote them — the interests that took her to the finals in Washington.

“I have such an admiration for people who can write their emotions down,” she said. “I really wanted to relay the poems I chose in a way that would cause others to become interested in the poets or in poetry itself. Even though they were written years and years ago, they are current because they portray emotions that we can still relate to. They endure the test of time.”

        

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