The Louder Than a Bomb poetry team, took third place at the finals Saturday, April 2, at the Gem Theater. The team, coached by English teacher Caroline Ewing, consisted of sophomore Tara Phillips, junior Cinthia Romo and seniors Emily Wilkinson, Adric Tenuta and Andrew Duffy.

 “The poems we recited at finals were poems we’ve never performed before. We took old poems and rewrote them,” Romo said.

  The poetry team met as often as they could to practice and improve their poems. During practices members presented their new poems hoping to get new ideas from their teammates critique.

  “We tried to rewrite our poems so we feel them more and they don’t feel fake when we perform them,” Phillips said.

  During the poetry slam competitions, each team member presents an individual poem followed by a group poem. Philips only performs an individual poem while Duffy only participates in the team poem.

  “What makes our team strong is the fact that we all have really different styles and we all write about really different things,” Romo said.

  To get to finals, the team had to compete in semifinals Monday, March 28 at the Jazz Museum. The team took second place by beating Lincoln Prep High School by .2 points.

  “[Winning my first competition] definitely felt really good, but not as good as winning semi-finals because it was really close and we thought we were tied so we were all really scared because that would mean we would have to go up again and we had no idea what we were going to do,” Romo said. “When they announced we won I actually started crying, it was pretty intense.”

  While the individual pieces earned the team points, the group piece really pushed them to second place.

“We definitely thought it was going to be killer. Our group piece is so different from everybody else’s and that was the 10 that we got,” Romo said. “We just feel really confident about our group piece.”