POETRY OUT LOUD

Organizing a Contest

LIST OF POETS AND POEMS TO CHOOSE : http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/find-poets

Poems & Performance

Nervous about reciting? Unsure of where to start? Don’t be—everything you need to help you perform a successful recitation is right here.

Keep in Mind

For the State and National Finals students are required to recite at least one poem that was written before the 20th century and one that is 25 lines or fewer. However, one poem (for example, George Gascoigne's “And If I Did, What Then?”) can fulfill both criteria at once.

Lead Teachers

Each school should identify one or two teachers as Lead Teachers to serve as the go-to people for all things Poetry Out Loud. Some duties for Lead Teachers:

- Getting and keeping in touch with the state POL coordinator
- Enlisting fellow teachers
- Distributing materials
- Organizing school events

Promotional Ideas and Social Media Publicity

Begin organizing your school event as early as possible in order to ensure greater attendance. Please see the PR Toolkit for information on promoting the event within your school and community, sample press releases and media advisories, and a social media guide.

Staffing the Competition:

•Emcee: Since there may be a lull during scoring, you may want the emcee to provide info about the poets or the students. (Music is also a good filler)

•3–5 Judges and 1 Accuracy Judge: See Judge Preparation for advice on judge selection

•Prompter: This is someone who will have a notebook with each poem, whom the students can look to if they forget a word or line.

•Score Tabulator: This person will input the scores into a database during the competition. A template is available here. Remember to test your tabulation system before the event.

Contest Venue

Classroom contests can be held during class periods. Reserve a school theater, auditorium, or other appropriate venue for your schoolwide competition. The ideal setting will have a stage and theater-style seating. Depending on the size of the venue, amplification may be appropriate.

Poem Selection

Students must provide the titles and authors of their poems and the order in which they will be recited to the coordinator. Students may not change their poems or their order once submitted. This will enable the coordinator to have poems for the accuracy judge and prompter and evaluation sheets prepared.

Introducing and Reciting the Poem

Competitiors recite individually. It is the student's job to identify the poem title and author, and, if necessary, the translator. (For example, "Little Father," by Li-Young Lee). A few other notes:

- A student's own editorial comments before or after the poem are not allowed.
- Epigraphs should be recited and their omission will affect the accuracy score.
- Footnotes should not be recited and their inclusion will affect the accuracy score.
- Stanza numbers and dedications are optional, and their inclusion or omission should have no bearing on accuracy.
- The poem must be delivered from memory.

Contest Resources

•Accuracy Score Sheet (PDF)

•Contest Evaluation Sheet (PDF)

•Evaluation Criteria and Tips (PDF)

•Judge’s Guide (PDF)

•Teacher Certificate (PDF)

•Sample Tally Sheet (Excel File)

•Scoring Rubric (PDF)

•Student Participation Certificate (PDF)

Robert Frost

1874–1963

Robert Frost is considered the bard of New England. Casual readers sometimes overlook the depth of his poetry and its technical accomplishment. His apparently simple poems — collected in volumes from A Boy’s Will to In the Clearing — reveal a darker heart upon close reading, and his easy conversational style is propelled by an unfaltering meter and an assiduous sensitivity to the sounds of language.

Poems

Richard Wilbur

b. 1921

Richard Wilbur began to write poetry in earnest only after experiencing the horrific chaos of battle during WW II service as an infantryman in Italy. No poet of his generation has been more committed to careful, organized expression or has more thoroughly mastered the forms and devices of traditional poetry; this conservative aesthetic and his deep love for “country things” link Wilbur to the Roman poet Horace and to his fellow American Robert Frost. Long a professor, he has also produced sparkling, witty translations of classic French drama.

Poems

Elizabeth Bishop

1911–1979

Elizabeth Bishop is a poet’s poet, much admired for the powerful emotions that pulse beneath her lines’ perfected surface and the unerring accuracy of her eye (she was also a painter.) Like her mentor Marianne Moore, Bishop moved from idiosyncratic observations of nature and its denizens—a “tremendous fish,” a “glistening armadillo”—to quiet, wise, and sad conclusions about humans’ place and prospects. Marked from the start by displacement—her father died soon after her birth, and her mother was institutionalized for mental derangement— Bishop traveled restlessly as an adult, writing often about voyages and of Brazil where she settled for a time.

Poems

Robert Lowell

1917–1977

The most celebrated and ambitious American poet of his era, Robert Lowell transformed the particulars of his prominent New England family’s background and turbulent private life into controversial art. Lowell’s book Life Studies (1959), which reveals his struggles with madness, alcohol, and marital infidelity, gave rise to the so-called “confessional” school. In subsequent works he explored political issues and historical figures while extending his experiments in verse technique.

Poems

William Wordsworth

1770–1850

William Wordsworth, born in Cumbria, England, began writing poetry in grammar school. Before graduating from college, he went on a walking tour of Europe, which deepened his love for nature and his sympathy for the common man, both major themes in his poetry. Wordsworth is best known for Lyrical Ballads, co-written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and The Prelude, a Romantic epic on the “growth of a poet’s mind.”

Poems

Emily Dickinson

1830–1886

The famous hermit from Amherst, Massachusetts, Emily Dickinson published only eight poems during her lifetime. Today her nearly 2,000 succinct, profound meditations on life and death, nature, love, and art make her one of the most original and important poets in English.

Poems

Marianne Moore

1887–1972

Considered “a poet’s poet” for the subtlety of her thought and glittering verse technique, Marianne Moore was also a fascinating character who in later life became a literary celebrity — she was recognized for her cape, three-cornered hat, and baseball fanaticism as for anything she wrote. Wide renown did not come until 1951, when Moore’s Collected Poems won the National Book and Bollingen Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.