Poetry Out Loud! Competition

Do you remember being asked to recite a poem as part of a high school English class? Well, if you never had to, you might feel pretty lucky. Most of us never had that "leap on top of a desk and shout, 'O Captain, my Captain,'" moment in high school, no matter how amazing our teachers were. But as it turns out, some students are turning poetry recitations into something even more fun to watch than Dead Poets Society.

High school students across the nation are competing in Poetry Out Loud, a national competition put on by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The event features the students performing classic and contemporary poetry, getting scored on their performances and then advancing to the next level of competition, from regional to state to national.

In February, Get Lit! Programs hosted the regional finals for eight area high schools at The Davenport Hotel. The winners were Abby Hawkes from Mead High School reciting “If” by Rudyard Kipling and “Video Blues” by Mary Jo Salter, as well as Cole Timm from Okanogan with “In a Dark Time” by Theodore Roethke and “The Dark Thrush” by Thomas Hardy. The Washington State Poetry Out Loud finals will be on Saturday, March 20 in Olympia, and twelve students from across the state will be competing for one spot at nationals. We wish Abby and Cole the best of luck at state!

The winner of the state final will receive $200, with the winner's school receiving $500 for the purchase of poetry books. The second place finalist will receive $100, with $200 for his or her school library. The state champion will receive an all-expenses-paid trip (with a chaperone) to compete in the National Finals in Washington, DC, on April 25-27, 2010. Free trip to Washington, D.C. in the springtime for being an awesome performance poet? Better start practicing that Kipling recitation, 9th-12th graders. Who knows where it will take you.

The Poetry Out Loud State Finals are FREE and open to the public.

Visit http://www.poetryoutloud.org/ for more information on this national program or visit http://www.arts.wa.gov/ to learn more about the local competition.