For more information on how you or your school can participate in the 2023-24 Poetry Out Loud season, please email Miller Carr, Poetry Out Loud Coordinator for Siskiyou County, at miller@siskiyouarts.org.

A partnership of the NEA, the Poetry Foundation, and the state arts agencies, Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance.

Poetry Out Loud, encourages students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary history and contemporary life.

Poetry Out Loud offers educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition to high schools across the country. Students select, memorize, and recite poems from an anthology of more than 900 classic and contemporary poems. In this pyramid structure competition, winners advance from classroom recitation contests to school-wide competitions, then to the state competitions and, ultimately, to the national finals in Washington, DC. 

Since 2005, Poetry Out Loud has grown to reach more than 3 million students and 50,000 teachers from 10,000 schools in every state, Washington, DC, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Poetry Out Loud uses a pyramid structure that starts at the classroom level. Winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to a regional and/or state competition, and ultimately to the National Finals.