SALEM – Sarah Cotton first heard Lewis Carroll's classic absurdist poem "Jabberwocky" from her grandmother.

Soon, the entire state will be able to hear it from her.

The 17-year-old Salem High senior took top honors Jan. 17 at the school's inaugural venture into Poetry Out Loud, a national competition that tests students' ability not only to memorize but to interpret classic works.

Cotton will be among dozens vying for the right to call themselves New Hampshire's top interpretive storyteller, when winners from 15 high schools meet March 22 at Keene State College to crown a statewide champion.

Long a staple of high school English curriculums, the three-year-old recitation competition has a simple goal: bringing poetry to the masses and making it cool.

"Good writing sounds well, just as it reads well," said Rodger Martin, a professor of journalism at Keene State and coordinator of the state's Poetry Out Loud program. "What our culture has done is try to lock that poetry only into a book. That whole power of the spoken word is missing."

Salem High's Kyle Johnson offers his interpretation of Katherine Phillips' 'Epitaph' Jan. 17 at the school.

Since 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with state arts agencies to support the expansion of Poetry Out Loud. Last year, 100,000 students competed.

But the idea has especially caught on in regions with strong traditions in the liberal arts. It began in New Hampshire with 1,800 students from 11 high schools, growing this year to include more than 4,000 participants from 15 schools. Martin said he'd like to see the program grow at a clip of about 10 to 15 percent a year. Schools competing this year will hold contests through February.

"I knew that once these students started to see the power of putting those slam poetry skills to work, there was no doubt they would discover a whole new way of feeling and understanding language," Martin said. "It was a tough burden getting the culture to buy into that, because sometimes we're so page-driven."

But as the native state for three living national poet laureates, the competition's popularity among youngsters here is encouraging but not surprising, organizers say.

"This whole program is just a perfect fit with New Hampshire. We are a state that has an abundance of fine writers, and it's a great place to be doing a program like this," said Catherine O'Brian, arts and education coordinator with the state's council on the arts.

Unlike poetry slams - where participants present interpretive readings of original material - students in Poetry Out Loud must choose from a catalog of more than 1,000 poems archived on the contest's Web site.

From there, each reader must stamp the piece with his or her own personality, and get judged on an array of topics, including accuracy, presentation and flow.

"Memorizing sometimes doesn't do it justice," Martin said. "It's learning in a different way. Get it out of the book and into the air."

At Salem, 20 students gave their take on a wide variety of poems, from hallmarks like Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" and Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!" to more modern creations such as Tony Hoagland's "Beauty" and "Fever 103" by Sylvia Plath.

Delivering an impeccably read poem requires a lot of practice, especially when it's in front of a live audience and fellow readers and a community access television station.

Still, school coordinator Karen Beaulieu said 95 percent of Salem's students have no formal theater or acting background - highlighting what officials say is a key part of Poetry Out Loud's appeal.

"It's really to help kids get a positive experience of classic poetry," Beaulieu said. "When they got going, they got really confident in themselves."

Hudson Wells, 19, said stepping up to the microphone was nothing like carrying out a late-afternoon classroom assignment.

"Here, you've got butterflies and are surrounded by people who have stepped up. I'm around poetry on a whole different level," he said. "I like that aspect of shining a light on a whole new reality."

The winner of the state competition will receive $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip to the national competition in Washington on April 27-29. The winner's school will receive $500 to purchase poetry books.

Previous New Hampshire champions have enjoyed success on the national level. In 2006, Bow High School senior Teal Van Dyck took second place overall.

Cotton isn't setting those kind of expectations for herself just yet, but said taking part in Poetry Out Loud has enabled her to share her love of the form in a way not previously available to her.

"I feel like a lot of people are bored or intimidated by poetry in a classroom, but if it's performed, it's a different experience," she said. "It's a great way to further learning about poetry. I think listening to people in general is a great thing to do."

More Information

►Map of schools where Poetry Out Loud is coming
►The national Poetry Out Loud site
►New Hampshire state Council of the Arts site

The locations for the 2008 Poetry Out Loud regional contests