TROY — Fifteen-year-old John Scala strides to the center of the stage and stands there for a few moments, head bowed. Then, he lifts his head, looks at the audience with a serious, steady gaze and begins his recitation.

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.”

Scala speaks in a strong voice; the words of the poem he’s performing — “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen — can be heard clearly in the rear seats of the small theater at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy. His delivery is theatrical but not over the top, and the audience is quiet and attentive during his performance.

“It’s a really powerful poem,” Scala, a sophomore at Niskayuna High School, said before the performance began. “In order to do a good reading, you have to connect with the poem. You have to make it your own.”

Scala recited two poems Thursday night at the regional competition for Poetry Out Loud, a national contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. He was one of six area students who earned a chance to compete at the state competition at the New York State Museum, to be held from 6 to 8 p.m. this Thursday.

The national finals will be held in April in Washington. Last year, another Niskayuna student, 2007 graduate Allison Tepper, went to the nationals.

Growing competition

This is the third year students from Niskayuna High School have participated in Poetry Out Loud, which was launched in 2006 in the hopes of inspiring teenagers to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance. Students select poems to recite from Poetry Out Loud’s official anthology of poems, which includes contemporary authors, such as David Kirby, as well as works by William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Poetry Out Loud begins at the school level, with winners advancing to the regional competition and then the state competition.

At the regional competition Thursday, 13 students recited a short poem of 25 lines or less during the first round; in round two, there were no length restrictions.

After each performance, there was a short pause so the panel of three judges seated in the back of the room could score the contestant. Scores were based on physical presence, voice and articulation, appropriateness of dramatization, level of difficulty, evidence of understanding, accuracy and overall performance.

In New York, Poetry Out Loud competitions are sponsored by the New York State Alliance for Arts Education and the New York State Council on the Arts.

The program started three years ago as a pilot program in the Capital Region. Last year, it expanded statewide and 12 schools participated. This year, 32 schools participated.

“Poetry Out Loud brings poetry into the classroom in a fun way,” said Lainy Slyder, program manager for the New York State Alliance for Arts Education. “Kids get so excited about this, which is wonderful. I never had that feeling as a high school student.”

Bringing life to verse

A recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts indicated that Americans are reading less than ever: In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

Slyder said an earlier NEA study that showed that students are not reading classic literature and poetry as much as they have in the past sparked the creation of Poetry Out Loud.

But last week, the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy was filled with high school students who spoke enthusiastically about their love of literature and writing.

“I’ve always written poetry, and I’ve always written short stories,” said Ebryonna Wiggins, 17, a senior at Shenedehowa High School.

Wiggins found out about Poetry Out Loud when she took a class in speech and public speaking; her teacher suggested she compete.

On Thursday, she recited “How I Discovered Poetry” by Marilyn Nelson and “A Song in the Front Yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Reciting a poem written by somebody else is a different experience than writing and reading your own poetry, but that doesn’t make it any less personal, Wiggins said.

“When you choose the poem you’re going to recite, you have to connect with it,” Wiggins said. “It’s like I’m giving [the audience] a piece of me.”

connection to the poem

She noted that she and Marilyn Nelson are both African-American writers.

“I felt like I could connect with [‘How I Discovered Poetry’],” she said. “Obviously, she’s an African-American female author who may be writing about her own experiences. ... I was the only African-American female in my class.”

Asked whether students are interested in poetry, Wiggins said, “A lot of students are more interested in writing it themselves.”

Scala, who has a background in theater, said he’s “really into Shakespeare and other poetry. I love all sorts of writing. I’m a literary-type person.”

He said he writes poetry as well as short stories about the same character — a project he compared to Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories.

The first poem he read Thursday, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116,” “is very close to my heart,” he said.

He acted in the New York State Theatre Institute’s production of “King of Shadows,” about a boy who travels back in time and is befriended by William Shakespeare, and that sonnet was “an integral part of the show.”

No stage fright here

At Niskayuna High School, 46 students competed in the school’s Poetry Out Loud event.

Casey Putnam, who teaches 10th and 12th grade English at the high school, said the event has become more popular; the number of students competing this year tripled.

For most of the students, interpreting poetry — thinking about what the author meant and figuring out how to express that — is a new experience, she said.

“For most of them, this a really good introduction to a lot of good poems,” she said. “A great way to experience a poem is to hear it.”

At Niskayuna, all 10th graders are required to pick a poem and recite it in front of their class.

Poetry Out Loud teaches students about more than poetry, Putnam said.

“For a lot of them, if they were panicked about getting in front of the class, maybe now they know they can get up in front of the class and do this,” she said.

At Mohonasen High School in Rotterdam, only one student was interested in Poetry Out Loud: Nico Colon, 17, who was competing for the third time.

“I love poetry,” said Colon, who will attend Siena College next year, where he plans to study teaching and counseling.

“I write poetry. I write music. It’s a big part of me. It’s a good experience, being able to express myself. Sometimes I can feel what the authors feel and understand their point of view.”

Colon read “Harlem” by Langston Hughes and “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost.

At Mohansen, poetry isn’t popular, “but the people I hang out with love to read,” Colon said.