The audience sat silently while the competitors performed. The six students sat not on opposing sides, but together in the front row of the theater at Rutgers University-Camden.

This was not a competition of athletics, but of words.

Poetry Out Loud challenged students to bring verse to life in three oral recitations.

Competitions were held first in local high schools, and the southern New Jersey winners competed in regional finals March 5 at the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts.

Regina Palombo, of Mainland Regional High School, and Emma Shakarshy, of Atlantic City High School, emerged victorious after three rounds. They will advance to the state finals March 27.

Started in 2006, Poetry Out Loud is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts through the New Jersey Council on the Arts. It has grown steadily, with 46 schools participating this year. Students choose three poems from an anthology of hundreds. One must have been written before the 20th century, and one must be 25 lines or shorter.

While poetry is usually the domain of English departments, students incorporated drama skills as well to show that poetry is more than just words on a page.

"As you learned it, you really became the poem," said finalist Travis Burlingame, of Cumberland Regional High School.

Shakarshy has done some acting, but said she had to tone down the drama and let the words be the star.

"It was an issue for me not to act too much," she said.

Students said they calmed their nerves by focusing on the poems.

"Poems are meant to be heard, and you are there to get the message across," Palombo said.

All of the finalists chose poems that spoke personally to them. Shakarshy likes Sharon Olds because she "tackles uncomfortable subjects."

Other choices ranged from Shakespeare to Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Allen Ginsberg.

Cierra Kaler-Jones, of Absegami High School, chose a Maya Angelou poem because "it reminded me of me. It took me to another level of confidence."

Palombo said her teacher had told the students to think of a time in their lives that had changed them and find a poem that spoke to that change.

The students also gave English teachers past and present credit for sparking an interest that made them appreciate poetry.

Judges Barry Moore, a director, and Darcy Cummings, a poet, had a rubric, or set of guidelines, to use in judging the students, but said the winners had just a little something extra that brought home the meaning of the poems.

"They were all confident," Moore said. "They were all good."