Roswell's Rory Berg heads to Poetry Out Loud finals

When Rory Berg stepped onto the Goizueta Stage for Youth and Families at the Woodruff Arts Center on March 6, the Roswell High School senior had one shot to recite three poems from memory to walk away as Georgia’s best. She did. Berg won the 2026 Poetry Out Loud Georgia contest, earning a spot at the Poetry Out Loud National Finals in Washington, D.C., April 27-29, where she will represent the state against champions from across the country.

The poem that won her the state title

Of her three competition poems — “A Pact” by Ezra Pound, “Song of Myself, 26” by Walt Whitman, and “The Graduate Leaving College” by George Moses Horton — Berg says it was Whitman’s work that sealed her win. The poem’s stream-of-consciousness structure gave her room to perform, rather than follow a fixed meter or rhyme scheme.

It traces the sounds of a city — dock workers, children, a funeral procession — before pulling the narrator into the emotional current of an orchestra. Berg says the poem resonated because of how openly Whitman describes the experience of simply being alive.