When Belise Nishimwe was young, growing up with her family in a refugee camp in Tanzania, she was privileged enough to have people who believed in her, who fought for her success. 

That support, as well as courage the 17-year-old Portlander has carried with her, culminated in one of the great successes of her young life Saturday as she was crowned Oregon’s Poetry Out Loud champion.  She now heads to the national competition this spring. 

A sophomore at St. Mary’s Academy in downtown Portland, Nishimwe beat out about 8,000 other high school students in Oregon, according to the Oregon Arts Commission, which organizes the competition in the state.  At the end of April, she’ll represent Oregon in the national Poetry Out Loud contest held in Washington, D.C.

“I feel in disbelief, honestly,” Nishimwe said. “ I still barely have any words to describe how I feel.” 

Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation competition organized by the Poetry Foundation and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.  A total $50,000 in awards and school stipends are handed out during the national finals, according the competition’s website.  The state winners are each awarded $200, and each of their schools gets $500 to buy poetry books. 

Because it’s a recitation contest, Nishimwe didn’t speak her own words, but the words of some her favorite poets: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claude McKay and Marilyn Nelson.  The challenge of recitation, she said, is interpreting the poems respectfully and making those other poets’ words her own. 

“It just really takes a lot of courage to get up there and be able to interpret a poem and say a poem the way that you feel it should be said,” Nishimwe said. 

That courage is palpable when she reads.  It was noticed by the judges and audience Saturday, but also by Oregon Poet Laureate Kim Stafford, who was in attendance and performed at the event. 

“When I listened to Belise deliver poetry to a silent room, I recognized her genius is a combination of skill and courage,” he said in a news release Saturday. “ Poetry comes up from the earth through her voice to the world.” 

Nishimwe’s family made it out of Tanzania when she was five, moving to America with help from Catholic Charities of Oregon.  Once in Portland, she enrolled at Holy Redeemer Catholic School, then St. Mary’s Academy for high school. 

Now a U.S. citizen, the teenager is pursuing a career path toward immigration law, hoping to connect with the kinds of refugee communities she came from – if not to help, then just to be there, she said, to be able to say, “I got you.” 

“I feel like I’ve been given these opportunities,” she said. “ I want to be able to give those back to the world.” 

Poetry might not seem an obvious path to law, but Nishimwe said performing with Poetry Out Loud has strengthened her voice and helped her to think more about how to represent complex thoughts in a way other people can understand. 

For now she’s focused on the upcoming national competition.  That means more practice, more memorization and more honing the skills she already has.  Winning would be great, of course, but she’s also trying to keep her success in perspective. 

“I’m going to remember that it’s even great that I got to this point,” Nishimwe said. “ That’s a victory I already have.” 

The national Poetry Out Loud competition will be streamed online at arts.gov.  Belise Nishimwe and other regional state winners are scheduled to perform on Tuesday, April 30, at 1 p.m. Pacific Time.  The final round will take place the following day. 

--Jamie Hale | jhale@oregonian.com | @HaleJamesB