Mahi Shah’s killer interpretations of Hawthorne and Nemerov win the county Poetry Out Loud competition.

For Notre Dame High School in Salinas, participation in the 2022 Monterey County Poetry Out Loud was a last-minute decision. “It was our first year so we felt no pressure,” says Mahi Shah, 14, this year’s winner. “We decided we will just go for it, and we did. So yes, I was pretty shocked,” she says about her victory.

The competition was founded in 2005 and since then it has been held in high schools across the U.S., reaching over 4 million students, according to the Poetry Out Loud website. Its first local phase is a recitation of two selected poems; at the final level, the national champion gets a $20,000 award. For now, Shah took home $150, and second and third place in the county-level competition were awarded $100 and $50, respectively.

Usually held with a big audience, the competition was streamed and watched online, with a small and quick gathering for the students and their families at the CSU Monterey Bay Alumni and Visitors Center on Saturday, Feb. 5. Monterey County Poet Laureate Daniel Summerhill did a spectacular job as master of ceremonies, as he kept the public warm and engaged, and even provided them (per fervent requests) with his own poetry while the judges worked on the vote count.

But the spotlight was mostly on the talented youth of Monterey County who provided quite a show, along with a solid dose of poetic catharsis. There were seven contestants judged by four judges: Susan Breen of the Arts Council for Monterey County; Eric Mora, policy analyst for Monterey County Supervisor Wendy Root Askew; Ernesto Lizaola of Salinas Public Libraries; and local real estate expert Ben Heinrich.

All contestants brought emotion to their interpretations, from haunting intonations courtesy of Vianey Aguirre-Villalobos, to serious, monumental pronouncements by Angela Liu. But Shah came across as the most genuine in her interpretation, showing both maturity and freshness. Her first pick was rather classy and therefore conservative: “The Ocean” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. After gracefully pulling off this slightly old-fashioned kite, Shah earned her victory with more contemporary “The Life Cycle of Common Man” by Howard Nemerov, offering the audience existential giggles.

Shah’s dream career is to become a writer but for now, she says, it’s a somewhat far-off goal. Her favorite book so far is George Orwell’s 1984.