“Is a world of sweets and sours; our flowers are merely – flowers,” Israfel, by Edgar Allan Poe, was a poem chosen by Tyler Ramage, junior, who participated for a spot in Poetry Out Loud during lunch on Friday Feb. 6. He advanced to the schoolwide Poetry Out Loud competition taking place Feb. 20 in the auditorium during first, second and third periods.

“This year was different in that we’re going to have outsiders that weren’t just sophomores to be a part of it,” Ryan Marsh, English teacher, said. “The juniors participating did it last year, and had a thirst to do more.”

Most schools have participants of all grades compete according to Marsh. “We probably limit ourselves by making it just sophomores which may be in the future becomes more of a schoolwide thing,” Marsh said. “We’ll see how it evolves from there.”

Participants in Poetry Out Loud start practicing in their English classes, advance to the schoolwide competition and from there they go to state and then to the national competition. Our school has yet to advance further than the school tier of the competition.

“This is only the third year West Linn has done Poetry Out Loud, so we have not even gone to state yet,” Marsh said. “It’s not as though we’ve been doing it for ten years or anything.”

Ramage hopes he can be the one to change that. “I’m hoping our school goes to state or nationals and that I can hopefully lead the Lions to a victory,” Ramage said.