Three students from Windham County will be at the Barre Opera House on March 8 to compete in the 2017 Vermont Poetry Out Loud state competition.
These young people will join students from 34 Vermont high schools representing 11 counties to vie for the state championship in the national poetry recitation competition. The state winner will compete in the national competition in April.
“The Poetry Out Loud program not only connects students to poets and poetry, it helps students develop transferable skills like communication and analysis that prepare them for college, career, and life,” said Troy Hickman, Vermont Arts Council education programs manager, in a news release.
These students are already champions, having won their individual high school's competition and thus a spot in the state competition. The students are: Samuel Stevens, Brattleboro Union High School; Izzy Beckwith, Twin Valley Middle High School; and Owen Simko, Vermont Academy.
This year, more than 5,500 students participated in classroom contests, with winners proceeding to school competitions. Each winner at the school level will recite at the semifinals in Barre.
From there, 10 students will be selected to compete in the finals on March 16 at Vermont PBS in Colchester. The winner of the Vermont State Competition then goes to the national finals in Washington, D.C., where he or she will compete against champions from every state in the country.
The Poetry Out Loud program was created by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and is administered statewide by the Vermont Arts Council. Now in its 12th year, Poetry Out Loud has inspired hundreds of thousands of American high school students to discover and commit to memory classic and contemporary poetry.