Uni is no stranger to the national spotlight. Senior Kareem Sayegh continued this prestigious tradition with his recent third-place finish — worth $5,000 — in the national round of 2009's Poetry Out Loud competition, held April 27-28 in Washington, D.C., and co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation.

After placing in the top five at the state level last year, it only seemed natural that Sayegh would ramp up his efforts toward the larger nationwide stage. What did our resident reciter have to say about his accomplishments? Hear it straight from Sayegh as he fills in some of the gaps of his success story.

Senior Kareem Sayegh treats students and faculty to his recitation skills during Uni's year-end awards ceremony Tuesday in Uni Gym. Gargoyle photo by David Porreca (click to enlarge)

Tell me a little about the poems that you chose. Why did you pick them? How did you make them your own?

I did three poems. I did "A Supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsberg, I did "The Man-Moth" by Elizabeth Bishop, and I did "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

All of them are very different. The first two are more modern. They're not in verse. They're free verse. They're kind of funny and sad at the same time. I chose them because they showed kind of a chromaticism, a large variety of emotions that I figured would lend themselves to performance.

If you choose a poem that's just angst or just humor or just any one certain type of emotion, unless it's short it doesn't keep the audience's attention for a long time. So I liked the ability to go many places with the poem and recite it differently each time. They were more performance pieces than anything else.

The last one is a sound poem. It's got a good message. It's about a bird that just awes somebody, and that brings him to a reverence to God. It has lots of alliteration, lots of internal rhyme, and it's just a lot of fun to say.

You were in Poetry Out Loud last year, and went even farther this year. What do you think made the difference?

I chose poems that were more interesting to me. I don't think much of it had to do with the performance, per se, but a lot of it had to do with the poems I chose and how I clicked with them. Last year I liked my poems, but I don't think I really took them in as my own, and this year I really made them my own. I really connected with them, and I think that helped me connect with the audience.

What was your practice routine?

It was sporadic, to say the least. I hadn't had "The Man-Moth" — probably my hardest and best poem that I recited — I didn't have it memorized until about three days before state. I'm ambivalent to as whether or not that was a good thing. That obviously made me less prepared.

I was very very worried that I was going to forget the whole poem when I got up on stage at state. Luckily I didn't, but at the same time it lends a certain excitement; you really don't know where you're going to go with it, and it lets you almost improvise on stage. So just as if you're taking a solo, you can kind of solo on your poem and interpret almost as you say it onstage because it takes a really long time for you to stop interpreting a poem.

It was very weird before the state level. I took a similar approach to the national level. I did the same poems, but I didn't recite my poems for three weeks after state, and I started re-reciting them, and I had them mostly memorized in the back of my mind, but I started re-reciting them about a week before nationals because I didn't want to beat them to death. I was worried that if I kept reciting my poems — it's not like I was going to be memorizing them more. Each time you recite them, it takes a little bit of the magic out of them, possibly. I was very superstitious about it.

How did your involvement in Uni's creative writing class and Unique magazine help you as a performer?

I've said to a bunch of people that there were four types of people there [at nationals]. There were theater kids, there were speech and debate kids, there were readers and writers of poetry, and there were people who had never done any of those things. I put myself in the third category, because I don't really do the theater and we don't even really have speech and debate anymore at Uni.

I think I'm probably biased because I don't do any of the other things, but I think the most important way of going about it is reading and writing poetry, because you can have all the theatrical flair and all the nuance in your abilities. I think the most important thing is to be able to understand and connect with your poem, and if you can't do that, then you're screwed. A lot of people had that ability and had both of those things, but I think the first and most important step is to be able to read poetry with a deeper understanding.

How did you celebrate after you heard that you won third place?

It was really weird. There was an after party. I got a bunch of books signed. I was actually confronted by a few young kids who asked for my signature, which was weird, but it was cute. We had an after party, and Garrison Keillor was there, and Patricia Smith was there. One girl said, "Hey, I missed my prom for this, so let's go to my room and have a dance party." I did minimal dancing, and then I went to bed.

You're going to the University of Chicago next year. Do you already know about or plan to do any poetry contests at that level?

I'm not sure if there are any poetry contests, but there are a lot of literary magazines. There are multiple literary magazines that I plan on hopefully being a part of. Also, the Poetry Foundation is based in Chicago, and I might do an internship for them. Since I was part of Poetry Out Loud, I got to speak to the head of the Poetry Foundation. So that was a useful "in." I'm still not sure as to any poetry competitions there. Probably if there are poetry competitions, it's not recitation, it's probably writing. But, I'm down for both.

Q: What's your advice for someone who wants to try their hand at what you did?

Read a lot of poetry. Not just the three poems that you have to read. What was really cool was being able to go to Poetry Out Loud and, not only do I know my three poems, but I know almost all the poems that everybody else is reciting. So my best advice is, gain a deeper understanding of poetry, keep reading it, and don't try to force a poem upon yourself, don't try to force yourself upon an audience. If you don't like a poem, if you don't feel like you understand it well enough, it's not the right poem. So, it's really really important to connect with your poems if you want to do well.