19th Annual Poetry Out Loud (POL) Participants

This past Wednesday, Washington-Liberty hosted our 19th annual Poetry Out Loud competition! Poetry Out Loud (POL) is a “national arts education program that encourages the study of great poetry by offering free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country.” W-L is a proud pilot-er of the original POL program, which now reaches more than 17,000 schools and organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa.

Twelve (12) students, three from each grade level, showed their talent, performing poems to an audience in the W-L library on Wednesday evening. There was a dynamic range of poems selected, from renowned works like those of Emily Dickinson, to modern masterpieces from poets such as Mahogany L. Browne.

We would like to extend our gratitude and congratulations to all of the impressive participants: Kyra Coronado-Wager, Sean Cruz, Clementine Gurkin, Pippin Blackwell-Curtis, Bellum McPhillips-DeFilippi, Abigail Houle, Allison Contreras, Nicholas Coughlin, Anna Mohanty, Riley Dennis, Solomon Galpern, and Erin Klein.

We would also like to extend a special thank you to: all of the staff and community volunteers that made this event possible; student volunteers from the National English Honor Society who helped things run smoothly; families and friends that came to support the participants.

Final congratulations to Erin Klein, our first-place winner of Poetry Out Loud, who will be representing W-L as she moves forward in the competition!