“Poetry, like visual art, makes space to breathe, pause, and consider.” —Ama Codjoe, 2023 Guggenheim Poet-in-Residence
Award-winning teenagers from around Illinois are set to compete in Springfield for a slot in the 2023 Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest in Washington, D.C., in early May. The state event is free, accessible, and open to the public. It is set to begin at 10:00 A.M. on Monday, March 13, 2023, in the LRS Theatre of the Hoogland Center for the Arts at 420 South Sixth Street in downtown Springfield.
The Springfield Area Arts Council will host sixteen high school students who were winners and runners-up in competitions held in February in eight regions spanning Illinois. Starting in their own classrooms, these students study, memorize, and recite renowned classic and contemporary poetry at each level of competition. A panel of poets, teachers, and performers judges each recitation. The state champion will receive a trip to the nation’s capital to join a field of fifty-four students vying for the top prize, a $20,000 scholarship.
Thad Bergschneider, Franklin High School, and Eliza Denham, Eureka High School, will represent the Central Illinois region.
The Springfield Area Arts Council coordinates this annual contest in partnership with the Illinois Arts Council Agency. Poetry Out Loud is backed by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Now in its eighteenth year, the contest is designed to encourage interest in poetry at the high school level. In Illinois this season, almost 8,000 students and 175 teachers from 42 Illinois public and private high schools participated.
More information is available at www.poetryoutloud.org.
Photo: Bergschneider, Dehnam
At central Illinois regional contest – Hoogland Center for the Arts – February 9, 2023
Photographer: William Richards
