Announcing the Get Lit! Kids and YA Headliners!

Announcing the 2013 Youth Headliners

Patricia McCormick is a two-time National Book Award finalist and the author of five critically acclaimed young adult novels, including Never Fall Down, the story of a young Cambodian boy whose musical talent proves to be his sole chance of surviving the Khmer Rouge. Joining her will be Emily Danforth, author of the widely acclaimed novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. This event will be free and open to the public. Saturday, April 13, 11:30 am, Spokane Public Library Downtown Branch.

Rebecca Stead is the Newbery Award-winning author of When You Reach Me and First Light. Her newest book, Liar & Spy, is a story about spies, games, and friendship. The story centers on seventh-grader Georges, his eccentric new homeschooled friends, and an apartment building spy mystery that needs to be solved. This event will be free to all youth; tickets for adult general admission are available through TicketsWest. Sunday, April 14, 11:30 am, Bing Crosby Theater.

Get your Get Lit! Festival Passes Now
Buy a pass and save $20-$25 off individual ticket costs and service fees.

Eastern Washington University’s 15th Annual Get Lit! Festival will feature over 50 events including author presentations and readings, writing workshops, panel discussions, poetry slams and writing contests. A Festival Pass gets you in to see the all of the headlining events: Jonathan Evison and Kim Barnes on Thursday, April 11; Joyce Carol Oates, Jaimy Gordon, and David Shields on Friday, April 12; Major Jackson and Robert Wrigley on Saturday, April 13; and Rebecca Stead on Sunday, April 14. The Festival Pass is regularly priced at $45, saving you $20-$25 off individual ticket costs and convenience charges. Individual tickets can also be purchased for each of the headlining events for $15. (Note: Students get in to all headlining events free with current ID.) 

Author Spotlight: Major Jackson
Join Major Jackson and Robert Wrigley for a conversation about poetry.

Major Jackson is an American poet, a professor of creative writing, the author of three poetry collections, and the Poetry Editor for the Harvard Review. His work has earned him the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize as well as the honor of being a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the NAACP Image Award. He has taught in the graduate MFA programs at Columbia University and New York University. He lives in Burlington, Vermont, where he is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at University of Vermont. While his earlier works consisted mostly of long narrative poems, Holding Company signals a creative evolution with its concise ten-line lyrical poems and ecstatic tone.

“True enough,/he wanted a row of filaments inside like Times Square./The sockets were dead” –Lying

Poetry Out Loud Regional Final
Learn more about the National Poetry Out Loud Competition here.

Thursday, February 7th, Get Lit! Programs hosted the Eastern Washington Poetry Out Loud Regional Final at the Bing Crosby Theater. Students from nine regional high schools recited classical and contemporary poetry for a chance to proceed to the state finals and get one step closer to becoming national champion. Tom Zbyszewski from Liberty Bell High School won the competition with his incredible performances of “Golden Retrievals” by Mark Doty and “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye. Langston Ward from Mead High School, last year’s state champion, placed second with stirring recitations of “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee and “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest and the Road Unknown” by Walt Whitman. Both Zbyszewski and Ward will compete in the state finals in Tacoma on March 9. 

For more information about this year's festival, visit our website.

Upcoming Poetry Out Loud Regional Final

It's almost here.

On Thursday, February 7, students from nine regional high schools will compete in the Eastern Washington Poetry Out Loud Regional Final, hosted by Get Lit! Programs. Two winners will be chosen to proceed to the State Finals in Tacoma where they'll be one step closer to becoming the 2013 National Champion.

The Regional Final will take place at the Bing Crosby Theater from 7:00 to 9:00 pm and will include the school winners from the following high schools: Central Valley, The Community School, East Valley, Lakeside, Liberty Bell, Mead, Medical Lake, The Oaks, and Okanogan. The competition will take place in two rounds, with participants reciting one poem for each round.

Poetry Out Loud Regional Final

Thursday, February 7, 7-9 pm

The Bing Crosby Theater

Free and open to the public

Now in its eighth year, Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the mastery of great poetry by offering educational materials and a dynamic competition to high schools across the country. The competition begins at the classroom level, progressing through school-wide, regional, and state competitions and culminating in the National Finals in Washington, DC. More than 250,000 students across the country are expected to take part in Poetry Out Loud this year.

Spokane Student Competes in National Poetry Out Loud Final

The National Finals of Poetry Out Loud, an annual competition featuring 53 students from all across the country, begin today! Sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowments for the Arts, this competition sees about 365,000 students from more than 2,000 schools put their poetry recitation skills to the test.

That's why it's such an honor to announce that one of the golden 53 is Washington State's very own Langston Ward, a junior from Mead High School in Spokane, Washington. Ward won the Eastern Washington regional competition in February, hosted by Get Lit!, which earned him a berth at the state finals in Tacoma. Ward's winning performance at the state finals, run by the Washington State Arts Commission, showcased Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach", Stephen Spender's "The Truly Great", and Carl Sandburg's "Chicago". His impressive first place recitation won him $200, plus a trip to the National Finals in Washington, D.C., all expenses paid. In addition, he landed his school $500 for the purchase of new poetry books.

Poetry Out Loud is an education program that inspires interest and passion for poetry, and this year saw the participation of about 68 schools and roughly 20,000 students in Washington State. The competition begins at classroom-level, expands to school-wide competitions, and then regionals. This year's regional competition was hosted by Get Lit! Programs.

This is the seventh year that high school students in Washington have participated in Poetry Out Loud, and we're proud of every single one of them for standing up and keeping alive the passion that poetry instills in people. We congratulate and wish the best of luck to Langston Ward. Send good thoughts his way as he competes in the semifinals today, May 14, from 5 p.m.to 8 p.m. The final event will be held May 15, beginning at 7 p.m.

Spokane Student Wins Washington State Poetry Out Loud Competition

Everyone on the Get Lit! Programs staff would like to congratulate Mead High School junior Langston Ward on winning the Washington State Poetry Out Loud championship. 

For winning the state competition, Ward received $200 in scholarships, a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books for his school, and an all expenses-paid trip to represent Washington State in the National Finals, May 13-15, in Washington, DC.  

The National Finals will award a total of $50,000 in scholarships, school stipends, with a $20,000 college scholarship for the Poetry Out Loud National Champion.

We all wish him luck and congratulate him on his state title!

Poetry Out Loud is a competition that encourages high school students to learn the complexity and beauty of poetry through memorization and public recitation. Get Lit! Programs serves as the coordinator for the region of Eastern Washington.

To watch a video of Langston Ward reciting "I am the Mob, the People" by Carl Sandburg at last year's state competition, visit the Washington State Art Commission's website here.

Poem of the Week by Stephen Spender

This week's selection is one of the poems performed by the winner of last week's Poetry Out Loud Regional Finals, Langston Ward from Mead High School.

The Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.

Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history

Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,

Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition

Was that their lips, still touched with fire,

Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.

And who hoarded from the Spring branches

The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget

The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs

Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.

Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light

Nor its grave evening demand for love.

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother

With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,

See how these names are fêted by the waving grass

And by the streamers of white cloud

And whispers of wind in the listening sky.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life,

Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.

Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun

And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

Sir Stephen Spender was born in London and attended Oxford University, where he became friends with the poet W. H. Auden. Auden convinced Spender that poets should find their material in the everyday world and in seemingly unpoetic things. In his poetry, Spender creates tension between the need to engage this world and a desire to transcend it.

Content from Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud!

Join us tonight for the Eastern Washington Poetry Out Loud Regional Finals. Student winners of their school competition from Deer Park, East Valley, Liberty Bell, Mead, The Oaks Academy, and Okanogan high schools will be competing from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. at the Lewis & Clark High School auditorium.

The competition, presented in partnership with The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, is part of a national program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. The winner of the regional finals will go on to compete at the state finals in March at Tacoma, where students have the chance to win scholarship money and a stipend for their school to use to purchase poetry books for the library.

Where: Lewis and Clark High School auditorium (521 W. 4th Ave., Spokane)
When: Thursday, February 2nd, 5:00 p.m.
Cost: FREE

National Book Festival features Poetry Out Loud students

This past weekend an estimated 200,000 people attended the 2011 National Book Festival, a two day celebration of the literary arts organized by the Library of Congress. This year's festival not only featured over a hundred award winning writers like Toni Morrison, Dave Eggers, and Garrison Keillor, but also showcased three talented high school students who were 2011 finalists for the national Poetry Out Loud competition.

Get Lit! is proud to be the Poetry Out Loud host and coordinator for the Eastern Washington area. With the new school year underway, we're looking forward to another year of impressive recitations and inspiring performances from our local high school students. We'd love to see one of our students on the line up for next year's National Book Festival!

For more information about Poetry Out Loud, click here. Get Lit! will be hosting a teacher development workshop (with available clock hours) for any high school teachers in the region who want to learn more about how to integrate Poetry Out Loud into their classroom and prepare their students for the competition. The workshop will be held on October 26 from 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM at the Spokane Riverpoint Campus. For more information, please contact us at getlit@ewu.edu.