As the lights dim over the audience, all eyes are on one person.

One person, whose voice echoes in the room.

One person, who speaks for change, for progress and for activism.

This person is Zach Lesmeister, senior, who placed sixth in the VerbQuake Festival Solo Ranking at St. Louis Community College Forest Park on Feb. 2 and will be advancing as an individual into finals.

At the VerbQuake Festival, MHS’s poetry slam team, Beauty & the Beats, learned they had placed first in preliminaries. They will be advancing to the Grand Slam finals Feb. 18 at the Urbarts venue.

To prepare for the poetry finals, Lesmeister plans on continuing to practice solo poems, which he has been doing since August.

“We’ve been crafting our poems and perfecting them and making them more crisp so we’re just going to work out our movements, diction, and tone,” Lesmeister said.

Lesmeister said poetry is important because it is a way for people to express their criticisms toward society and promote activism through an entertaining and engaging manner. He said poetry slams have helped him to grow as a poet by seeing all of the different styles.

“The competition aspect forces you to bring your best foot forward and constantly grow,” Lesmeister said.

Last year, Lesmeister attended the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, which he said has influenced his current poetry greatly by allowing him to understand what writing poetry is like at the national level.

He said such experience was important because it helped him understand how judges will perceive a poem and have a general grasp for rankings before the results even come out.

Lesmeister said this is a large reason why his team scores so well at slams.

“With that information, I’m able to bring back that kind of style and energy and teach my team that aspect of how to perform,” Lesmeister saud.

Jordan Shatto, senior, came in 18th place in the solo rankings, four spots away from advancing to finals. Shatto said poetry club meets almost every Friday.

“For first semester, we mainly use shared poems we had written and just tried to get a feel for how we all perform as writer,” Shatto said.

Shatto said the slam poetry season begins each January, so members of the Slam Poetry Team have been working on applying the performance aspect to poetry. In recent weeks, Shatto has been meeting more often with her teammates to work on and improve not only individual pieces, but group poems as well.

“It’s just a lot of writing, a lot of practicing, and a lot of collaboration among all of us,” Shatto said.

Shatto said poetry slams revolve around expressing the truth and telling stories no matter how crazy they may be.

“I think poetry gets a bad rep because people think it’s this emo, super sad, full-of-yourself kind of activity, but it’s really incredible,” Shatto said. “I meet some really talented people and I think it tells some really necessary stories that people shouldn’t be so scared of.”

While Shatto said she was not surprised when her team made it into finals, she was very happy to find out that MHS has won first in the VerbQuake Youth Festival.

“I think our performance at VerbQuake was the best performance every single member ever done, so I was super proud of all of us to see what we have accomplished,” Shatto said.

Shelly Justin, poetry club sponsor, said that while she has confidence her students will place well at finals, the competition gets extremely stiff at this point in the slam season.

“This is when everybody brings their A game, and it’s showtime,” Justin said. “My kids got to really step it up and prepare to go against [Kirkwood].”

Justin said the team has been practicing very hard – going to each other’s houses, reserving the stage to practice with the microphone, and critiquing each other.

Justin said poetry slams are important because they improve speaking and communicating skills, which everyone is going to need at some point in their lives and careers. Justin said it also makes people focus on their writing, thinking and interpretation skills.

“Poetry is probably the most beautiful written art form there is because it does have that interpretation piece to it and people can relate their own lives to it,” Justin said. “It’s powerful.”