Grade 5 student Hans Hanna at Hjorth Road Elementary is the latest winner of the Red Carpet Poetry Slam, a competition that encourages creative writing and performance for Grade 4 and 5.
Hanna captured the top spot in the contest by Canada SCORES - a charity that provides after-school programming combining soccer, poetry and community projects - for his poem "World Peace," which paints a picture for a better world for everyone. His performance also received the Viewer's Choice Award.
"I wanted my poem to be meaningful, so I thought about COVID and everything and thought, why don't we just save the world?" said Hanna. "That's how I came up with the idea that we need to stop fighting, we need peace."
"I noticed Hans' ability to write almost right away," said Jordan MacDougall, an outreach worker with the Community-Schools Partnership department. "Last year, he was one of the finalists in this poetry slam, and he wanted to see if he could do even better - and he ended up winning!"
One thing that set Hanna's poem apart from the competition was he incorporated sign language into his performance that he learned from watching movies.
"I thought the actions would mean something," he said. "I didn't want my poem to be just a poem, I wanted people to see what I meant."
"I didn't know he was going to do sign language until the first time he performed," said MacDougall. "That made a big impact on the other students and got them to include their own unique touches on their poems."
As a result of winning, Hanna will compete virtually against other students in the United States in the coming weeks.
Kevin Yang, executive director of Canada SCORES, said the Red Carpet Poetry Slam is the culminating event for the poetry portion of their year-long program, allowing their poet-athletes to showcase their creativity. Since 2015, Canada SCORES has run programs in the district for more than 400 students, and currently partners with five Surrey elementary schools with funding from The United Way Lower Mainland.
"We are super excited that Hans from Hjorth Road Elementary is the winner of this year's event," he said. "Not only is he an amazing poet, he is also a tremendous leader at our program. We all are very proud of him."
