Whiz Kid of the Week: Kari Barclay
Age: 17
School: Richard Montgomery High School
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Accomplishment: Kari was among the top students competing in , which encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. 365,000 students competed nationwide.
From November to April, Kari memorized and performed three different poems across a series of contests at the county, regional, state, and finally national level. Patch was there when Kari and other participants in January at the Writer's Center.
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“[At first] I was just trying to memorize the words,” said Kari in a recent interview. “My goal was to make it to state. I was really honored to make it to the top nine in the nation. It was beyond my wildest dreams.”
Reason for Awesomeness: “There was a lot of pressure,” Kari confided as he discusses the final competition. He faced an audience of 600, the contest judges and several celebrities. Luckily, about 30 classmates turned out to support him “The two front rows were all my friends. It was great.” Kari found performing for his largest audience yet exciting. “The bigger the audience, the happier I was,” he said. “The more people to react to my poem, the more people I could convey my message to.”
Kari chose challenging poems, including John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud, and Dog by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “I'm comfortable with Shakespeare,” Kari said of his choices, “so why not venture outside my comfort zone?”
Key to Awesomeness: Kari’s willingness to take risks outside his comfort zone may be the key to his success. Last summer, he visited Nicaragua on a service trip. He and other students dug latrines and helped build a community center in a small village. "It's always important to help out,” he says, “but part of it was helping me to discover something about myself. I want to learn what it's like to be human- that's the mark of a good actor. When you get into a new environment, you find out what to keep and what to throw away.”
