PORTLAND – Lulu Hawkes only recently discovered the power of her voice.

She knew she had ideas and emotions to share. She had been crafting them into poems reflecting her African heritage and interest in social and political issues since she was an eighth-grader.

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Catherine McAuley student Lulu Hawkes performs her poetry. "It's a lot like music," she says of reciting poetry. Photos by Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer

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Then last May, when she was a sophomore at Catherine McAuley High School, she participated in a poetry slam at the annual Champlain College Young Writers’ Conference in Vermont. She delivered one of her own poems and was surprised by the response.

“I won the contest and got a standing ovation,” Hawkes recalled. “I never knew that I had a powerful voice or that people enjoyed hearing it. That really fueled me.”

Lulu’s newfound gift gained statewide recognition on March 11, when she won the 2011 State Poetry Out Loud Championship in Lewiston, topping nine other students from across Maine. She will represent the state at the National Poetry Out Loud Contest on April 27-29 in Washington, D.C.

Now 17 and a junior at Catherine McAuley, Lulu recited three poems at the statewide contest: “Gitanjali 35” by Rabindranath Tagore; “Black Boys Play the Classics” by Toi Derricotte; and “A Song for Soweto” by June Jordan. Participants choose poems from a prescribed list and must follow strict rules in reciting them.

Lulu impressed the judges, according to the Maine Arts Commission, infusing her delivery with passion and understanding. When she takes the stage, she pronounces words fully, raising and lowering her voice to provide inflection. She punctuates her performance with gentle hand and body movements, and pauses occasionally to give the audience time to absorb it all.

“It is a lot like music,” Lulu agrees when the qualities of her delivery are noted. “The rhythm and the beat of it. It’s not just poetry anymore. You transform words on a page into something meaningful.”

Lulu’s win came as no surprise to Lynne Erkkinen, an English teacher at Catherine McAuley. She had Lulu in a creative writing class last year and is coaching her through the Poetry Out Loud competitions.

Erkkinen also is the high school’s drama director, so she’s particularly proud that Lulu was named all-festival cast member at the Maine Drama Festival on March 25-26. Erkkinen also recommended Lulu for a major part that she played in a recent production by the professional Acorn Studio Theater in Westbrook.

“She has a gift for speaking, for performance,” Erkkinen said. “She has a natural understanding of cadence, of the rhythm and flow of words. She has a natural affinity for language.”

Erkkinen attributes some of Lulu’s success to her family background, and some of it to the girl herself.

Born in Zimbabwe, in southern Africa, Lulu came to the United States when she was 2 years old. She lives in Gorham with her mother, Otrude Moyo, a social work and policy professor at the University of Southern Maine, and her stepfather, Roland Hawkes, a Maine native and retired sociology professor. The couple met when they were teaching together in Africa.

“(Lulu’s stepfather) told me that Lulu comes from a long line of powerful African women,” Erkkinen said. “You can see that in Lulu. But she also has a charisma that comes from within. She has the power to inspire others.”

A good student and athlete, Lulu plans to study international relations when she goes to college. She also plans to continue writing about the things that inspire her, including her family in her native country, which she will visit again this summer. She hopes to use her voice, both as a speaker and a writer, to promote understanding and change across the globe.

“I want to make people aware of what’s going on in their community and around the world,” Lulu said. “Words can really mean something.”

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com

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