What Would Walt Read Out Loud?

High School students from throughout Wyoming will participate in the state finals of the "Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest," at 7 p.m., March 5, at the Plains Hotel in downtown Cheyenne.

Winners of this year’s competition will be announced at an awards ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda at 8 a.m., March 6. The public is invited to attend both the evening competition and awards ceremony.

During the state finals, contestants will recite works they selected from an anthology of more than 400 poems. It includes old favorites by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as well as poems by dynamic living authors who've read their work or conducted workshops in Wyoming, such as Joy Harjo, Jorie Graham, Robert Bly, and Li Young-Lee. You can read those poems -- or memorize them yourselves -- by going to the Poetry Out Loud web site.

The Wyoming Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation are co-sponsors of POL. It's a national program that encourages high school students to learn about poetry through memorization, performance and competition. This is the second consecutive year that Wyoming has participated in Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud encourages mastery of great poetry by offering educational materials and a dynamic competition to high schools across the country. The process begins at the classroom level. Those winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to the state capital competition, and ultimately to the National Finals in Washington, D.C. More than 250,000 students across the country are expected to take part this year.

The NEA and Poetry Foundation created a standards-based teacher’s guide, a comprehensive website and a CD featuring poetry recitations by well-known actors and writers such as Anthony Hopkins, Alyssa Milano, N. Scott Momaday and Rita Dove.

FMI: Wyoming Arts Council at 307-777-7742.

Labels: awards, Poetry Out Loud, poets, Wyoming

- posted by Michael Shay @ 11:56 AM 2 comments

 
Meet the Arts Council Board

The Wyoming Arts Council board meets Feb. 1-2 at the Hitching Post Inn in Cheyenne as part of this week's 25th anniversary celebration of the Governor's Arts Awards. The board will meet from 1-5 on Thursday and 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. on Friday. The traditional public comment session will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Friday at the Hitch. This is your opportunity to offer your comments about the WAC and/or the board, or to quiz us about our policies. The WAC has undergone many changes in the past year so it's a good time to come out and see what's new.

The GAA dinner and awards ceremony starts at 6 p.m. on Friday at the Taco John's Center next to the Hitch. Dinner will be served at 7, followed by the awards presentation by Gov. Dave Freudenthal at 8. We also have some great entertainment on tap. One of the honorees this year is poet and teacher Barbara Smith of Rock Springs. This continues the WAC tradition of honoring writers, literary groups and patrons in the state. During the past 25 years, awards have gone to David Romtvedt, Charles Levendosky, Gaydell Collier, Neltje, Ucross Foundation, and Wyoming Writers, Inc. It's not too early to start thinking about other lit people and orgs that have contributed mightily to Wyoming's literary tradition.

Unfortunately for procrastinators, the registration deadline for Friday's GAA gala event already has passed. See you next year.

Labels: artists' communities, awards, poets, writers, Wyoming Arts Council

- posted by Michael Shay @ 10:06 AM 0 comments