Wesley Mann is a senior at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Northeast D.C. who recently took top honors at the District’s Poetry Out Loud competition, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Next month, he’ll compete nationally at George Washington University, where he’ll be judged by radio personality Garrison Keillor and Tony award-winning actress Tyne Daly. The winner will walk away with a $20,000 award.
Which poems did you recite in your winning performance?
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold and “I Am” by John Clare.
Were you nervous?
I wasn’t nervous — there’s no point in being nervous. I don’t mean to sound cocky, but there’s no point to it.
Was it a challenge to prepare?
Personally, I find it fairly easy to memorize poems because I have a background in theater. Reciting them is about understanding and expressing as much with your voice as possible, and then amplifying with your body movements to the minimal extent. If you over act, the judges dock points.
Are any of your teachers owed some credit for your accomplishment?
Jonathan Vaile is my literature teacher. He’ll pick apart a poem or a piece of literature and completely take it apart — nit-picky things. But then you understand each and every part, and I’m thankful for that because it makes you understand the meter and the rhyme and why the style is the way it is.
Do you have a favorite line from one of the poems you read at the competition?
It’s probably the last line from “Dover Beach”: “Where ignorant armies clash by night.” The poem is about a guy looking out from the coast and speaking to a woman and telling her that love is the only thing that brings happiness in the world, and without it there is no joy.
Is the poem right?
I’d say there’s more to life than love, but it makes for a good poem.
