Poetry Out Loud event in Marquette

The second annual Marquette Senior High School Poetry Out Loud Recitation Championship was held today at the Shirley Smith Little Theatre at MSHS.

Fifteen MSHS students qualified for the competition by competing in recitation contests held within their English classes.

The MSHS Champion will advance to the Michigan State Championship in East Lansing on February 22^nd and 23^rd.  The State Championship is sponsored by the Michigan Humanities Council.

The state winner will receive $200 and an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete for the national championship. The state winner’s school will receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books. The runner-up in the state competition will receive $100, along with $200 for his or her school library.

Scholarships and school stipends totaling $50,000 will be awarded at the national finals, with a $20,000 college scholarship for the Poetry Out Loud national champion. All Michigan finalists are awarded a scholarship for participation in the Michigan Youth Arts Festival, on behalf of the Council.

The MSHS Poetry Recitation Championship consisted of two rounds, with each contestant reciting one poem in each round, in accordance with the rules set forth by the National Endowment for the Arts.

A list of students participating in the MSHS Poetry Out Loud Recitation Championship, along with the poems they recited:

·         David Bashaw: “Candles” by Carl Dennis, “The Blues Don’t Change” by Al Young

·         Reilly Chabie:  “The Bones of My Father” by Etheridge Knight, “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold.

·         Beth Cipriano:  “All Hallows Eve” by Dorothy Tanning, “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson.

·         Martinus Gray: “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Winds” by William Shakespeare.

·         Maggie Guter: “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy, “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Emily Dickinson.

·         McCall Kochevar: “Movement Song” by Audre Lorde, “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton.

·         Anthony Lackey: “Uphill” by Christina Rosetti, “The Bloody Sire” by Robinson Jeffers.

·         Laura Markham: “When I had fears that I may Cease to be” by John Keats, “Ecology” by Jack Collom.

·         Jordan Matthews: “The Destruction of Sennacherib” by Lord Byron, “The Arrow and the Song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

·         Andrew Middler:   “On Quitting” by Edgar Albert Guest, “Part for the Whole” by Robert Francis.

·         Chelsey Morin: “Cartoon Physics, Part 1” by Nick Flynn, “I am Learning to Abandon the World” by Linda Pastan.

·         Bradley O’Hagan: “Stopping  by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “I Remember, I Remember” by Thomas Hood.

·         Kelly Sprouse:  “Movement Song” by Audre Lorde, “Planetarium” by Adrienne Rich.

·         Maddie Touchinski: “Give all to Love” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Pity the Beautiful” by Dana Goiai.

·         Tim Wuepper:  “I find no Peace” by Thomas Wyatt, Cartoon Physics, Part 1” by Nick Flynn.

For more information on Poetry Out Loud’s national program, visit www.poetryoutloud.org.