Sedona Red Rock High School juniors Glenna Barnes and Iolani Sutton won the school’s 2025 Poetry Out Loud competition on Jan. 21, and will now move on to the regional semifinals on Feb. 8 at Northern Arizona University. Sophomore Salem Perches was the runner-up.

“Since the program began in 2005, more than 4.4 million students and 81,000 teachers from 20,000 schools across the U.S. have participated in Poetry Out Loud,” the organization’s website states.

Poetry Out Loud competitions teach poetry using memorization and performance and progress through classroom, school, regional, state and national levels. Students are required to prepare three poems, including one with 25 lines or fewer and one written before the 20th century.

“I was thoroughly impressed with all of the contestants. What I thought was really cool about that event is it, in a relatively fast amount of time in this format, it allowed me and the audience to kind of peek through the window into the depth of who these students are, both in what they think about and care about,” Sedona-Oak Creek School District Superintendent Tom Swaninger said. “It was impressive to me to see them put themselves out there because it is a vulnerable moment for those kids, but they were comfortable being vulnerable.”

Glenna Barnes

Barnes said that she credited being on the cheer team with having aided her in returning to the program after dropping out of the competition in her freshman year due to stage fright, while illness caused her to miss the event last year.

“It’s nerve-wracking, for sure, and it gets your heart rate up, but it’s really fun,” Barnes said. 

“Growing in a grade level has made my confidence higher. Because I was in cheer, I’ve been in front of the school before, so it’s not that scary. And I’ve been on stage and I’ve done productions before, so I’m kind of at home in that space.”

“With cheer, you’re around your teammates, but here, you’re by yourself, but you still have to memorize something and put your energy into it,” Barnes said.

Barnes performed Kazim Ali’s 2005 “Rain.” For the next round of the competition, she has selected the 1845 poem “The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow but has not made a third choice.

“The central emotion of [‘Rain’] is longing, wanting change, reaching for something unattainable, and in the end, it’s just, you are it, and you can’t change that. You are rain, basically, and you can’t change it, even though you want to,” Barnes said.

Rain

By Kazim Ali

With thick strokes of ink the sky fills with rain.
Pretending to run for cover but secretly praying for more rain.

Over the echo of the water, I hear a voice saying my name.
No one in the city moves under the quick sightless rain.

The pages of my notebook soak, then curl. I’ve written:
“Yogis opened their mouths for hours to drink the rain.”

The sky is a bowl of dark water, rinsing your face.
The window trembles; liquid glass could shatter into rain.

I am a dark bowl, waiting to be filled.
If I open my mouth now, I could drown in the rain.

I hurry home as though someone is there waiting for me.
The night collapses into your skin. I am the rain.

Kazim Ali, “Rain” from The Far Mosque. Copyright © 2005 by Kazim Ali.  Reprinted by permission of Alice James Books. Source: The Far Mosque (Alice James Books, 2005)

Iolani Sutton

Sutton’s performance choices so far are “Pity the Beautiful” by Dana Gioia and “Burning in the Rain” by Richard Blanco, with her third poem still under consideration.

Pity the Beautiful

By Dana Gioia

Pity the beautiful,
the dolls, and the dishes,
the babes with big daddies
granting their wishes.

Pity the pretty boys,
the hunks, and Apollos,
the golden lads whom
success always follows.

The hotties, the knock-outs,
the tens out of ten,
the drop-dead gorgeous,
the great leading men.

Pity the faded,
the bloated, the blowsy,
the paunchy Adonis
whose luck’s gone lousy.

Pity the gods,
no longer divine.
Pity the night
the stars lose their shine.

Poem copyright ©2011 by Dana Gioia, whose most recent book of poems is “Pity the Beautiful,” Graywolf Press, 2012. Poem reprinted from “Poetry,” May 2011, reprinted by permission of Dana Gioia and the publisher.

“In the first couple of lines, it talks about your parents and your relationship with them, and your relationship with people who are already in love,” Sutton said of “Pity the Beautiful.” “I don’t know why, but when I first read it, I was drawn to it. It’s also just a very beautiful poem, and whenever I [recite] it, I get emotional.”

Outside of Poetry Out Loud, Sutton is involved in the National Honor Society and the Interact Club. Her favorite subject is art, particularly visual art forms like painting and pottery. She said that she enjoys the intuitive process of creating abstract art, as well as drawing portraits.

“‘Burning in the Rain’ I’d choose gray; there’s a line ‘a thousand gray butterflies in the wind’ and it’s representing ashes,” Sutton said.

Sutton said that if she was to try to represent “Pity the Beautiful” visually, she would chose a pink color scheme for the poem’s “very feminine tone,” adding that she selected it because it’s short, snappy and relates to teenage experiences because “it’s very sarcastic.”

“Performing gets high schoolers out of their comfort zone … many people are prone to do what they’re used to, and not stepping out of their comfort zone,” Sutton said. “I think people should be more open to poetry itself and performing.”