DHS Language Arts teacher and contest sponsor Nelva Jones said
Isacc Ramos won this year’s local competition and earned the right to compete in the state finals on February 22nd.
Jones said Ramos is a young writer and artist, whose love of reading includes JRR Tolkein, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain. One day Ramos hopes to have a career in art.
For the competition, Ramos will be reciting "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes and "The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Jones said that if Ramos speaks with as clear a voice and confident interpretation of his two poems in Santa Fe as he did in Deming, he will “represent the Wildcats well next weekend.”
Poetry Out Loud is a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation and state arts agencies.
The New Mexico portion of the national poetry recitation contest is sponsored by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.
The New Mexico competition was held statewide. Ten schools, 904 youth, and 23 teachers participated at the classroom level.
Schools sending representatives to the state finals include Deming High, as well as schools in Albuquerque, Carlsbad, Gallup, Las Cruces, Los Alamos and Raton.