This past Thursday, October 21st, Middletown North held their annual Poetry Slam event in the outside courtyard. The Slam was open to any student as it took place during transition. This year’s big winner was Senior Daniel Enoch.

Poetry Slam is a competition run by North’s great English teachers, Mrs. Stevens, Mr. Russoniello, Mrs. McGowan, and Mrs. Goldfarb. The competition encourages students to share poems to an audience. That audience then votes for the winner based on the way the poet presented their poem and the actual content behind their poem.

This year’s winner, Daniel Enoch, gave a moving rendition of his poem with no name. The poem was quite sad and depicted a person struggling with their memory deteriorating. When I asked Daniel about the inspiration behind the poem he said, “The poem was about seeing my grandmother in the hospital suffering with Alzheimer’s. It was truly heartbreaking to see.” The performance Dan gave was moving and he deservingly won the Poetry Slam title.   

Daniel said the reason he participated in the slam this year was solely because there was not as many people as he would have liked performing poems. “I came to support some of my friends who were saying their poems, and I saw how there were only a few people going so I figured I should go and read a poem I had,” Enoch told me.

Many other poets had great poems that conflicted voters in the crowd. The turnout for Poetry Slam was large with around 50 people in attendance many whom were excited to hear the poetry.