(uplifting guitar music) Voiceover: In recent years Fargo Shanley High School has been very successful in the North Dakota Poetry Out Loud competition, with much of the credit belonging to English teacher Brian Geffre.

With great enthusiasm Geffre helps his students learn, recite and interpret poems for the competition.

Julia: It was a picture I had after the war.

A bombed English church.

I was too young to know the words English, or war.

Brian: The sponsors of Poetry Out Loud are The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation.

Alex: But now that you run and climb and leap ... Brian: This is a recitation competition so they take poems that have been published and memorize and interpret those poems.

Grace: I gaze upon her rose-wreathed hair ... Brian: If they make it to the finals in Bismarck they must have a poem that's under 25 lines, a poem that is from pre-20th century, and then a poem of their choice.

Usually people who move on to the next level have a variety of poems that they do, to show the depth of their expression.

Once they get it memorized it's a lot easier for them to work on the emotion, but some people just won't ever get to that point.

But the ones that do, they're the ones that really start to imagine what is in the poem.

Then they bring out that in their voice.

I really do believe that once you visualize it that it will naturally come out.

Being able to speak clearly and use imagery in the way you speak ... Bruce: Well he's different, really, in his teaching ways.

He wants us to really understand what we're learning and how we're learning it.

He has a lot of class discussions to make sure we really understand what we're learning and why we are learning it.

Julia: When Mr. Geffre talks about poetry he just lights up.

It's like, "Poetry Out Loud's coming, "Poetry Out Loud's coming, get ready!"

He really makes kids want to try.

He makes kids want to learn the poetry and look at the meaning behind the poem.

He helps kids along, he helps them if they're not fully understanding what the poem's about or if they don't really grasp what the poet's trying to say, he really helps with that.

Brian: Break up into little groups, three to four, and I want you to practice your poem.

Meg: Rejoice and men will seek you, grieve and they turn and go.

Brian: Please give your best and your most active attention to Timothy Murphy.

(applause) Timothy: (in Old English) Between March and Averil, when spray beginneth to spring, The little fowl hath their will in their lud to sing.

I live in love-longing for seemlokest of all thing She may me bliss bring, I am in her bandoun.

Now of course for you kids that's like listening to chamber music, but that's what the language sounded like 200 years after the Norman Conquest, when the Norman French ...

Boy: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

Boy: From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those Girl: who favor fire, but if it had to perish twice I think I know Meg: I will last with you.

Weep, and you weep alone, for the sad old ...

I like that it's a simple way to express your emotions and just write or say what you want to say without it being too long or it being too short.

You can express your emotion in a good way.

Girl: There's a place I know where the birds swing low and the wayward vines go roaming, where the lilacs ...

Girl: What if it were possible to vanquish all this shame with a wash of varnish, instead of wishing ...

Girl: Everything but death comes to me, it makes me work and give up ...

Boy: It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil.

Girl: Although she cried and all the rest unsaid, identical came back in sorry echo.

Alex: Before high pilot books and charactery hold like rich garters the full-ripened grain ...

Girl: But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage.

Brian: Five or six, yep, okay.

Next was Grace Kidder.

Older Woman: Zero mistakes Brian: I was going to say, that was really well read.

It changes the rhythm where the rhythm is important to the poem.

Julia was next.

Older Woman: Zero mistakes.

Brian: Gregory Beauclair.

Older Woman: He did the repeat.

Woman: She got a 31 from me.

Brian: I got a 33.

Older Woman: The way she was comfortable with it, the way she recited it.

Alex: When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleamed my teeming brain.

John: The thought that stings, how are you, nothing.

Elizabeth: Five PM on the nose.

They open their mouths and it rolls out.

Julia: Sometimes I growl, shake myself ... Grace: And he was rich, yes, richer than a king, and admirably schooled in every grace.

Alex: You squeezed its leash in your fist, it followed where you lead.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, nodding its wooden head.

John: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works ye mighty, and despair.

Elizabeth: The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, or things unknown but longed for still, and his tune ... Grace: I now by all the bitter tears that I have shed for thee.

The racking doubts, the burning fears, avenged they well may be.

Julia: The ruined city still seemed noble.

The cathedral with its roof blown off was not less Godly.

I don't block the audience out at all, I actually take in the audience.

I love watching their eyes and seeing their reactions.

I tend to feed off that, I tend to feed off the crowd.

If I was saying my poem one-on-one to you, you'd probably not think it's very good.

I gain a lot of energy from the crowd and the eyes.

Brian: For the second year in a row we have as our champion, Julia Johnson.

(raucous applause and cheering) Julia: I loved hearing the other competitors say their poems.

I just get so happy for them when they're able to do as well as they do.

The competition does get stiffer as you get higher up and people are going to be good.

I mainly focus on myself and what I need to do, and how well I can do.

Then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name the people with any fleck of a smear in his voice or any far off smile of derision.

The mob, the crowd, the mass will arrive then.

(applause) Voiceover: Prairie Mosaic is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, The North Dakota Council on the Arts, and by the members of Prairie Public.