Registration for the 2014-2015 New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud competition is now open. Interested high schools and homeschoolers affiliated with local high school groups should register by Nov. 1. The program is limited to 40 registrants.
To help mark Poetry Out Loud’s 10th anniversary, New Hampshire will incorporate the theme “Celebrate the Voices of Our High School Students” into this year’s program. Each year approximately 10,000 Granite State students participate.
A nationwide program of the National Endowment of the Arts in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud encourages youth to learn about the beauty and power of language through memorization and performance of great poems. The program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence and learn about their literary heritage.
Poetry Out Loud competitors memorize and recite poems from hundreds identified by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation that represent the breadth of great poetry. Participants are judged on the quality of their presentation, accuracy in reciting the poem and its difficulty. The program supports the Common Core language arts and curriculum frameworks.
In New Hampshire, classroom champions compete to represent their high school at regional competitions; those winners participate in the state championship, which is scheduled to take place in March 2015. New Hampshire’s champion will join other state champions at the national finals in Washington, D.C., where more than $50,000 in college scholarships and prizes are awarded to the top finishers.
New Hampshire’s Poetry Out Loud program is managed by the N.H. State Council on the Arts with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Writers Project. Other partners include the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, Granite State Ambassadors and the Frost Place.
To learn more or to register, go to nh.gov/nharts and click on the “Poetry Out Loud” button on the right. New Hampshire educators interested in having their school participate in 2014-2015 New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud should contact Catherine O’Brian at 271-0795 or
Catherine.R.OBrian@dcr.nh.gov.
