Cobb Student Wins $20,000 In National Poetry Competition

SOUTH COBB, GA -- A Cobb County high school student has won the prestigious 2017 Poetry Out Loud National Championship. Samara Elán Huggins, a senior at Whitefield Academy in Mableton, was crowned Wednesday for stirring recitations of poems by W.D. Ehrhart, Arthur Rimbaud and John Berryman.

Samara, who beat out 53 finalists out of more than 310,000 competitors across the country, also takes home a $20,000 award.

The National Endowment for the Arts, which bankrolls the Poetry Out Loud initiative in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, congratulated Samara on her championship.

Samara said that poetry allows her to express herself deeper than any other way. "I think that as humans we are innately creative beings and that we need to be able to express ourselves in multiple artistic ways. Poetry is one of the ways I do it," Sarah said, according to the NEA.

The event, held in Washington D.C., is in its 12th year. The contest encourages youths to educate themselves about the wonders of poetry, both classic and contemporary, through memorization and recitation.

Nicholas Amador from the Punahou School in Hawaii won second place and Iree Mann from Syosset High School in New York won third place.

Image via NEA