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15 students to vie for Poetry Out Loud championship, including Jamesha Nellum of Newport High School


Fifteen school champions will advance to the Poetry Out Loud state competition March 5 at the Grand Theatre in Frankfort.

The winner of the state championship will advance to the Poetry Out Loud national finals April 30-May 1 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Poetry Out Loud is a poetry recitation contest sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Each student, in the first and second round, is judged on the recitation of two poems. Five finalists will be judged on the recitation of a third poem. All poems are selected by the students and their teachers from a preapproved anthology of works.

The school champions, listed by name, school and county are:

Haley Bryan of Grant County was Poetry Out Loud champion in 2017.

Abby Adams-Smith, Bowling Green High School, Warren
Michael Ball, Bath County High School, Bath
Serenity Blevins, Augusta Independent Schools, Bracken
Brianna Bradford, Betsy Layne High School, Floyd
Bailey Brooks, Spencer County High School, Spencer
Courtney Covey, Grant County High School, Grant
Mary Kate Godfrey, Elizabethtown High School, Hardin
Allison Hay, Hart County High School, Hart
Grayson Karleski, St. Xavier High School, Jefferson
Max Hoam Kitoke, Red Bird Christian School, Clay
Luke Martin, George Rogers Clark High School, Clark
Jamesha Nellum, Newport High School, Campbell
Nathan Reynolds, Owensboro High School, Daviess
Savannah Shivers, Allen County-Scottsville High School, Allen
Hannah Tirlea, Scott County High School, Scott

Judges for this year’s state competition are Frederick Smock, current Kentucky Poet Laureate, professor of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville and author of 10 collections of poetry, including “Book of Earthly Delights” and “On Poetry: Palm-of-the-Hand Essays”; George Ella Lyon, Kentucky Poet Laureate for 2015-17 and author of the acclaimed poem “Where I’m From,” which is used as a model for poetry writing in classrooms around the world; and Frank X Walker, Kentucky Poet Laureate for 2014-15, co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets and author of “Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers,” which won a 2014 NAACP Image Award.

Kentucky Arts Council


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