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Florissant Civic Center Hosts Poetry Out Loud Contest Feb. 2
This year Poetry Out Loud celebrates its ten-year anniversary as a national poetry recitation contest open to all high school students throughout all 50 states, and this year the Florissant Civic Center Theatre will host one of the nine Missouri regional competitions on Monday, Feb. 2 at 4 p.m.
The National Endowment for the Arts, along with ARTS WORKS, the Poetry Foundation, the Missouri Arts Council, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies, provides funding for both the contests and the winning contestants who move through school, regional, state and national tiers of the pyramid contest. Beginning in 2006 the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Missouri Arts Council partnered to bring this program to Missouri schools. Last year over 5,000 Missouri students and 200 teachers from Missouri participated.
This year Mayor Thomas P. Schneider, the Florissant City Council, and Civic Center Theatre manager Gary Gaydos agreed to host the St. Louis County Regional Poetry Out Loud competition with the help of the theatre staff and area volunteers. Mayor Schneider will welcome the nine county high school competitors by reciting one of his poems.
Students participating in this year’s St. Louis County Regional will be Sam Pointer from Affton High School-Troy Kozak, school coordinator; Katherine Yee from John Burroughs School-Jill Donovan, school coordinator; Addison Knight from Lutheran High School North-Carolanne Kneznekoff, school coordinator; Alexandra Parr from McCluer North Senior High School-Kemba Metropoulos, school coordinator; Kaitlyn Reynolds from Nerinx Hall-Jean Fry, school coordinator; Ryan Wahidi from Parkway North High School-Melissa Lynn Pomerantz, school coordinator; Miranda Tze from Parkway South High School-Steve Wissinger, school coordinator; Ann Truka from Parkway West High School-Andria Benmuvhar, school coordinator; and Jacqueline Fox from Villa Duchesne-Elizabeth Yee, school coordinator.
These nine students represent 1,325 St. Louis County students from 80 different classrooms with 39 participating teachers involved in Poetry Out Loud just in our own St. Louis County region!
These students memorize and perform three poems from a vast on-line anthology that includes internationally known poets from Shakespeare to the Brontës through Frost and Angelou to current poet laureates. They participate in three rounds of competition evaluated by three judges considering the following criteria: physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, level of complexity, evidence of understanding, overall performance, and accuracy. The St Louis County regional judges are Rev. Renee Fenner, rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Florissant; Doug Lane, retired English teacher and former Florissant resident; and Pam Geppert, current school librarian.
The regional winner will have all expenses paid to participate in the Missouri State Poetry Out Loud competition in Jefferson City on March 12. The Missouri State Champion will compete at the National Poetry Out Loud Finals in Washington, D.C., April 27-29, 2015. The State Champion and their chaperone receive an all-expense paid trip to the finals. The champion’s family will also receive a travel stipend from the Missouri Arts Council in order to accompany the State Champion to the finals.
For more details about Poetry Out Loud call the Florissant Civic Center Theatre Box Office, 314-921-5678, or go to: www.poetryoutloud.org. Residents can attend the St. Louis County Regional competition on Monday, Feb. 2 at 4 p.m. in the Florissant Civic Center Theatre and get a first-hand look at the competition.
