Sherry Chandler » A Poetry Olympics?
A Poetry Olympics?
from the current online Blue Moon:
The Kentucky Arts Council is partnering with Kentucky Alliance for Arts Education to participate in the National Poetry Recitation Contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. “Poetry recitation as a competitive event is as old as the Olympic Games,” says Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Along with wrestling, long-distance running and the javelin toss, the ancient Olympics included contests in music and poetry. Performers trained for years and traveled great distances to the games. Now more than two thousand years since the Olympics began - and after a few silent decades — the recitation contest returns.”
The Kentucky recitation contest Poetry Out Loud will involve ten Kentucky High Schools that have been selected from applications submitted in December. The participating schools are Doss High School, Louisville; Greenup County High School, Greenup; Christian County High School, Hopkinsville; Simon Kenton High School, Independence; Danville High School, Danville; Mercer County High School, Danville; Deming High School, Mount Olivet; George Rogers Clark High School, Winchester, Madison Central High School, Richmond; and Trimble County High School, Bedford.
Contest coordinating teachers will use program materials, including a hardcopy discussion guide and poetry anthology, audio CD and a comprehensive Web site provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. In addition, schools will receive a two-day “poetry intensive” artist residency provided by creative writing and drama artists from the Arts Council’s Arts Education Roster of Artists.
A finalist from each school will be selected to participate in the statewide competition March 30, 2006 at Kentucky State University, Frankfort. The winner and the runner-up will be honored at the Kentucky Writers’ Day celebration at the Capitol Rotunda in Frankfort on April 24, 2006. Kentucky Writers’ Day commemorates the birth date of Kentuckian Robert Penn Warren, the first U.S. Poet Laureate and celebrates the literary arts in Kentucky.
Each winner at the state level will receive $200 and an all expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete in the May 16, 2006 National Finals. The Kentucky winner’s school will receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry books. The runner-up will receive $100, with $200 for his or her school library. The NEA and the Poetry Foundation will provide all prizes and awards including the travel costs to the National Finals for each state winner and one chaperone.
For further information, visit http://www.poetryoutloud.org.
And speaking of a poetry Olympics, let me remind you that the deadline for the Kentucky State Poetry Society Student Contest is March 1.
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