[upbeat blues guitar]
- The Executive Director
for the Mississippi Arts
Commission, Malcolm White.
(applause)
- On behalf of the Commission
and our partners,
the National
Endowment for the Arts,
and the Poetry Foundation,
I would like to
welcome you here
to the 14th annual
Mississippi Statewide
Poetry Competition.
And thanks again to my
buddy, Dexter Allen,
for our entertainment tonight.
(applause)
This year, more than 300,000
students across the nation
participated in the contest.
Here in Mississippi,
39 high schools
from all across our state,
from Meridian to Vicksburg,
Southaven to Biloxi
began this journey
towards today’s competition.
It began for many of you at the
beginning of the academic year,
perhaps in an English class,
some of you in a theatre class,
while others became
interested and got involved
through a kind teacher
or club advisor.
However you came here, we are
delighted to have you here.
2500 students from
across this state,
as well as 132 teachers
were involved to get us
to this point in
our competition.
In February,
the school champions
represented their schools at one
of three Regional Contests
that were held statewide.
And from each of the Regionals
came three top contenders,
three top-scoring individuals
who will recite
here today at MPB.
I personally congratulate each
and every one of you
on your achievement,
and I want to give you
my personal best
as we continue to
compete here today.
And most importantly, I want
you to remember that today
is about you and
the art of poetry.
It is now my privilege
to introduce you
to our emcee
for our program.
Please welcome my friend
and our emcee today
Mississippi Public
Broadcasting’s own,
Michelle McAdoo.
(applause)
- Let me first tell you
how proud
Mississippi Public
Broadcasting is
to share “Poetry Out Loud”
with our statewide
television audience.
We believe that academic
contests should and do
stand on the same stage as all
other pursuits of excellence,
and that the contestants not
only deserve our attention,
but our respect.
Poetry Out Loud seeks to
promote the art of poetry
in both the classroom
and the community.
The program provides an
entry point for many students
to learn to love poetry
and, for most,
to introduce them
to poems
that will stay with
them for a lifetime.
Scoring recitations is
one of the most important,
and most difficult, aspects
of a Poetry Out Loud contest.
Judges are asked to evaluate
very different recitations,
each displaying an
impressive level of excellence,
and they must decide how well
students represent complex poems
that may lend themselves to
more than one interpretation.
The integrity of Poetry Out Loud
rests on the work of the judges
at each and every
level the contest.
Serving on today's
panel of judges are
Author, songwriter, singer,
Mississippi Arts Commission
Roster Artist and
Teaching Artist,
and Mississippi Humanities
Council speaker,
Richelle Putnam.
(applause)
Assistant Professor
of Theatre
in the Communication Department
at Mississippi College,
Dr. Phyllis Seawright.
(applause)
Writer, editor, and
instructor of English
at Jackson State University,
C. Liegh McInnis.
(applause)
Actor, director, and
Artistic Director
of Jackson's
New Stage Theatre,
Francine Thomas Reynolds.
(applause)
Arts educator and
Associate Director of Programs
at the Center for the Study
of Southern Culture
at the University of
Mississippi, Afton Thomas.
(applause)
And courtesy of the
Mississippi Arts Commission,
our Accuracy Judge
is Sondra Lee-Bell,
our prompter is
Anna Ehrgott,
and our score
tabulators are
Shirley Smith
and Emily Tschiffely.
(applause)
Poetry Out Loud
recitations are scored
in five categories:
Physical presence,
voice and articulation,
dramatic appropriateness,
evidence of understanding,
and overall performance.
It is interesting to note that
Poetry Out Loud is a contest,
not a competition.
If it were a competition,
the contestants
would all be reciting
the same poems
and the judges
would be choosing
one recitation over another.
In Poetry Out Loud,
the judges evaluate
each recitation independently
according to the five
scoring categories
using a predefined
six-level scoring system.
In other words, the judges
do not select the finalists,
the scores do.
There will be three
rounds in today's contest.
Each contestant has
prepared three poems
and will each recite
one in Round One
and another
in Round Two.
The three top-scoring
contestants will then each
recite a third poem to determine
who will represent Mississippi
at the National
Recitation Contest
in Washington, D.C.,
in April.
And now we begin Round One
of the 2019 Mississippi
Poetry Out Loud
Recitation Contest.
- “Bleeding Heart” by
Carmen Giménez Smith.
My heart is bleeding.
It bleeds upward and
fills my mouth up with salt.
It bleeds because
of a city in ruins,
the chair still warm
from sister's body,
because it will all
be irreproducible.
My heart bleeds because of
baby bear not finding mama bear
and it bleeds to the
tips of my fingers
like I painted my nails Crimson.
Sometimes my heart
bleeds so much I am a raisin.
It bleeds until I am a
quivering ragged clot,
bleeds at the ending
with the heroine
and her sunken cancer eyes,
at the ending with
the plaintive flute
over smoke-choked
killing fields.
I'm bleeding a river
of blood right now
and it's wearing a culvert
in me for the blood.
My heart rises up in me,
becomes the cork of me
and I choke on it.
I am bleeding for you and
for me and for the tiny babies
and the IED-blown leg.
It bleeds because
I'm made that way,
all filled up with blood,
my sloppy heart a sponge
filled with blood to squeeze
onto any circumstance.
Because it is mine,
it will always bleed.
My heart bled today.
It bled onto the streets
and the steps of city hall.
It bled in the pizza parlor
with the useless jukebox.
I've got so much
blood to give
inside and outside
of any milieu.
Even for a bad
zoning decision,
I'll bleed so much
you'll be bleeding,
all of us bleeding
in and out like it's breathing,
or kissing, and because it is
righteous and terrible and red.
(applause)
- “History Lesson” by
Natasha Trethewey.
I am four in
this photograph,
standing on a wide strip
of Mississippi beach,
my hands on the flowered hips
of a bright bikini.
My toes dig in,
curl around wet sand.
The sun cuts the rippling Gulf
in flashes with each tidal rush.
Minnows dart at my feet
glinting like switchblades.
I am alone except
for my grandmother,
other side of the camera,
telling me how to pose.
It is 1970, two years
after they opened
the rest of this
beach to us,
forty years since the
photograph where she stood
on a narrow plot of
sand marked colored,
smiling, her hands
on the flowered hips
of a cotton meal-sack dress.
(applause)
- “April Love” by
Ernest Dowson.
We have walked in
Love's land a little way,
We have learnt his
lesson a little while,
And shall we not
part at the end of day,
With a sigh, a smile?
A little while in
the shine of the sun,
We were twined
together, joined lips,
forgot How the shadows
fall when the day is done,
And when Love is not.
We have made no
vows--there will none be broke,
Our love was free as
the wind on the hill,
There was no word said
we need wish unspoke,
We have wrought no ill.
So shall we not part
at the end of day,
Who have loved and
lingered a little while,
Join lips for the
last time, go our way,
With a sigh, a smile?
(applause)
- “The New Colossus”
by Emma Lazarus.
Not like the brazen
giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs
astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed,
sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman
with a torch,
whose flame Is the
imprisoned lightning,
and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome;
her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor
that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your
storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips.
“Give me your tired,
your poor,
Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside
the golden door!”
(applause)
- “Traveling Through the
Dark” by William E. Stafford.
Traveling through the dark
I found a deer
dead on the edge of
the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll
them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve
might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I
stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap,
a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened
already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she
was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side
brought me the reason—
her side was warm; 
her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that
mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its
lowered parking lights;
under the hood
purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the
warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could
hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—
my only swerving—,
then pushed her over
the edge into the river.
(applause)
- “Requiem” by
Camille T. Dungy.
Sing the mass—
light upon me washing words
now that I am gone.
The sky was a hot, blue sheet
the summer breeze
fanned out and over the town.
I could have lived
forever under that sky.
Forgetting where I was,
I looked left, not right,
crossed into a street
and stepped in front of the bus
that ended me.
Will you believe me when
I tell you it was beautiful—
my left leg turned
to uselessness
and my right shoe flung some
distance down the road?
Will you believe me when I tell
you I had never been so in love
with anyone as I was,
then, with everyone I saw?
The way an age-worn man
held his wife’s shaking arm,
supporting the weight
that seemed to sing
from the heart she clutched.
Knowing her eyes
embraced the pile that was me,
he guided her sacked
body through the crowd.
And the way one woman
began a fast
the moment she looked
under the wheel.
I saw her swear off decadence.
I saw her start to pray.
You see, I was so beautiful the
woman sent to clean the street
used words like police tape to
keep back a young boy
seconds before he rounded
the grisly bumper.
The woman who cordoned the area
feared my memory would fly him
through the world on
pinions of passion much as,
later, the sight of my awful
beauty pulled her down to tears
when she pooled my blood
with water and swiftly,
swiftly washed my stains away.
(applause)
- “Earth, You Have Returned
to Me” by Elaine Equi.
Can you imagine waking up every
morning on a different planet,
each with its own gravity?
Slogging, wobbling, wavering.
Atilt and out-of-sync with
all that moves and doesn’t.
Through years of trial and
mostly error did I study this
unsteady way?—?
changing pills,
adjusting the dosage,
never settling.
A long time we were
separate, O Earth,
but now you have
returned to me.
(applause)
- “Writing”
by Howard Nemerov.
The cursive crawl, the
squared-off characters these
by themselves delight,
even without a meaning,
in a foreign language,
in Chinese, for instance,
or when skaters curve
all day across the lake,
scoring their
white records in ice.
Being intelligible,
these winding ways
with their audacities
and delicate hesitations,
they become
miraculous, so intimately,
out there at the pen’s point
or brush’s tip,
do world and spirit wed.
The small bones of the wrist
balance against great
skeletons of stars exactly;
the blind bat surveys his way
by echo alone.
Still, the point of
style is character.
The universe induces a
different tremor in every hand,
from the check-forger’s to
that of the Emperor Hui Tsung,
who called his own calligraphy
the ‘Slender Gold.’
A nervous man writes nervously
of a nervous world, and so on.
Miraculous.
It is as though the world
were a great writing.
Having said so much,
let us allow there is more
to the world than writing:
continental faults
are not bare convoluted fissures
in the brain.
Not only must the
skaters soon go home;
also the hard inscription of
their skates is scored across
the open water, which
long remembers nothing,
neither wind nor wake.
(applause)
- “Caged Bird” by
Maya Angelou.
A free bird leaps on the back of
the wind and floats downstream
till the current ends and dips
his wing in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down
his narrow cage can seldom see
through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped
and his feet are tied
so he opens
his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged
bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks
of another breeze
and the trade winds soft
through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting
on a dawn bright lawn
and he names
the sky his own
But a caged bird stands
on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts
on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped
and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
(applause)
- This concludes Round One
of the 2019 Mississippi
Poetry Out Loud
Recitation Contest.
We'll now proceed
directly to Round Two,
during which we'll hear a second
recitation from each contestant.
- “Hysteria” by
Dionisio D. Martinez.
For Ana Menendez
It only takes one night with
the wind on its knees
to imagine Carl Sandburg
unfolding a map of Chicago,
puzzled, then
walking the wrong way.
The lines on his
face are hard to read.
I alternate between the tv,
where a plastic surgeon
is claiming that every facial
expression causes wrinkles,
and the newspaper.
I picture the surgeon reading
the lines on Sandburg’s face,
lines that would’ve made more
sense if the poet had been,
say, a tree growing
in a wind orchard.
Maybe he simply smiled too much.
I’m reading about
the All-Star game,
thinking that maybe Sandburg
saw the White Sox of 1919.
I love American newspapers,
the way each section is folded
independently and
believes it owns the world.
There’s this brief item in
the inter-national pages:
the Chinese government
has posted signs
in Tiananmen Square,
forbidding laughter.
I’m sure the plastic surgeon
would approve,
he’d say the Chinese will
look young much longer,
their faces unnaturally smooth,
but what I see
(although no photograph
accompanies the story)
is laughter bursting
inside them.
I go back to the sports section
and a closeup
of a rookie in mid-swing,
his face keeping all the
wrong emotions in check.
When I read I bite my lower
lip, a habit the plastic surgeon
would probably call
cosmetic heresy
because it accelerates
the aging process.
I think of Carl Sandburg
and the White Sox;
I think of wind in
Tiananmen Square,
how a country deprived of
laughter ages invisibly;
I think of the Great Walls
of North America,
each of them a grip on some
outfield like a rookie’s hands
around a bat when the
wind is against him;
I bite my lower lip again;
I want to learn to
think in American,
to believe that a
headline is a fact
and all stories are suspect.
(applause)
- “Love Song” by
Dorothy Parker.
My own dear love,
he is strong and bold
And he cares not
what comes after.
His words ring sweet
as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are
lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a
flag unfurled—
Oh, a girl, she’d
not forget him.
My own dear love,
he is all my world,—
And I wish I’d
never met him.
My love, he’s mad, and
my love, he’s fleet,
And a wild young
wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair
to his roaming feet,
And the skies are
sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet
to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love,
he is all my dreams,—
And I wish he
were in Asia.
My love runs by
like a day in June,
And he makes no
friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his
galloping rigadoon
In the pathway
of the morrows.
He’ll live his days
where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or
wind uproot him.
My own dear love,
he is all my heart,—
And I wish
somebody’d shoot him.
(applause)
- “Dover Beach” by
Matthew Arnold.
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full,
the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;
on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the
cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast,
out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window,
sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long
line of spray
Where the sea meets
the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear
the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves
draw back, and fling,
At their return,
up the high strand,
Begin, and cease,
and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence
slow, and bring
The eternal
note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean,
and it brought Into his mind
the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we Find also
in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this
distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith Was
once, too, at the full,
and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of
a bright girdle furled.
But now I only
hear Its melancholy,
long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind,
down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles
of the world.
Ah, love, let us be
true To one another!
for the world, which seems
To lie before us
like a land of dreams, So
various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy,
nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace,
nor help for pain;
And we are here as
on a darkling plain
Swept with confused
alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant
armies clash by night.
(applause)
- “What I Learned from
the Incredible Hulk”
by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
When it comes to clothes, make
an allowance for the unexpected.
Be sure the spare in the trunk
of your station wagon
with wood paneling
isn’t in need of repair.
A simple jean jacket says Hey,
if you aren’t trying to smuggle
rare Incan coins through
this peaceful little town
and kidnap the local orphan,
I can be one heck of
a mellow kinda guy.
But no matter how
angry a man gets,
a smile and a soft stroke on
his bicep can work wonders.
I learned that male chests
also have nipples,
warm and established—
green doesn’t always
mean envy.
It’s the meadows full
of clover and chicory
the Hulk seeks for rest,
a return to normal.
And sometimes, a woman
gets to go with him,
her tiny hands
correcting his rumpled hair,
the cuts in his hand.
Green is the space
between water and sun,
cover for a quiet man, each rib
shuttling drops of liquid light.
(applause)
- “Rondeau” by Leigh Hunt.
Jenny kissed me
when we met,
Jumping from
the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief,
who love to get
Sweets into your list,
put that in:
Say I'm weary,
say I'm sad,
Say that health and
wealth have missed me,
Say I'm growing old,
but add, Jenny kissed me.
(applause)
- “I Have a Time Machine”
by Brenda Shaughnessy.
But unfortunately it can only
travel into the future
at a rate of one second
per second,
which seems slow
to the physicists
and to the grant committees
and even to me.
But I manage to get there,
time after time,
to the next moment
and to the next.
Thing is, I can't turn it off.
I keep zipping ahead—
well not zipping—
And if I try to get out of this
time machine, open the latch,
I'll fall into space,
unconscious, then desiccated!
And I'm pretty sure
I'm afraid of that.
So I stay inside.
There's a window, though.
It shows the past.
It's like a television
or fish tank.
But it's never live;
it's always over.
The fish swim in
backward circles.
Sometimes it's like
a rearview mirror,
another chance to see
what I'm leaving behind,
and sometimes like blackout,
all that time wasted sleeping.
Myself age eight, whole head
burnt with embarrassment
at having lost a library book.
Myself lurking in
a candled corner
expecting to be
found charming.
Me holding a rose though I want
to put it down so I can smoke.
Me exploding at my mother
who explodes at me
because the explosion of some
dark star all the way back
struck hard at mother's
mother's mother.
I turn away from the window,
anticipating a blow.
I thought I'd find myself
an old woman by now,
traveling so light in time.
But I haven't gotten far at all.
Strange not to be able to
pick up the pace as I'd like;
the past is so horribly fast.
(applause)
- “Mad Song” by
William Blake.
The wild winds weep,
And the night is a-cold;
Come hither, Sleep,
And my griefs infold:
But lo! the morning peeps
Over the eastern steeps,
And the rustling birds
of dawn
The earth do scorn.
Lo! to the vault
Of paved heaven,
With sorrow fraught
My notes are driven:
They strike
the ear of night,
Make weep the eyes of day;
They make mad the roaring winds,
And with tempests play.
Like a fiend in a cloud
With howling woe,
After night I do croud,
And with night will go;
I turn my back to the east,
From whence comforts
have increas'd;
For light doth seize
my brain
With frantic pain.
(applause)
- “To Have Without Holding”
by Marge Piercy.
Learning to love
differently is hard,
love with the hands
wide open,
love with the doors
banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked,
the wind roaring and whimpering
in the rooms rustling the sheets
and snapping the blinds
that thwack
like rubber bands
in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles
that feel as if they are
made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives,
then of sharp knives.
It hurts to thwart
the reflexes of grab, of clutch;
to love and let go
again and again.
It pesters to remember the
lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed
to the work that gutters
like a candle in a cave
without air,
to love consciously,
conscientiously,
concretely, constructively.
I can’t do it, you
say it’s killing me,
but you thrive, you glow on the
street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium
balloon bright bachelor’s button
blue and bobbing on the cold
and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in
passionate diastole and systole
the rhythm of our
unbound bonding,
to have and not to hold, to
love with minimized malice,
hunger and anger
moment by moment balanced.
(applause)
- “The Rights of Women” by
Anna Laetitia Barbauld.
Yes, injured Woman!
rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded,
scorned, opprest;
O born to rule in
partial Law's despite,
Resume thy native
empire o'er the breast!
Go forth arrayed
in panoply divine;
That angel pureness
which admits no stain;
Go, bid proud Man his
boasted rule resign,
And kiss the golden
sceptre of thy reign.
Go, gird thyself with grace;
collect thy store
Of bright artillery
glancing from afar;
Soft melting tones thy
thundering cannon's roar,
Blushes and fears
thy magazine of war.
Thy rights are empire:
urge no meaner claim,—
Felt, not defined,
and if debated, lost;
Like sacred mysteries,
which withheld from fame,
Shunning discussion,
are revered the most.
Try all that wit and
art suggest to bend
Of thy imperial foe
the stubborn knee;
Make treacherous Man
thy subject, not thy friend;
Thou mayst command,
but never canst be free.
Awe the licentious,
and restrain the rude;
Soften the sullen,
clear the cloudy brow:
Be, more than princes' gifts,
thy favours sued;—
She hazards all, who
will the least allow.
But hope not,
courted idol of mankind,
On this proud
eminence secure to stay;
Subduing and subdued,
thou soon shalt find
Thy coldness soften,
and thy pride give way.
Then, then, abandon
each ambitious thought,
Conquest or rule thy
heart shall feebly move,
In Nature's school, by
her soft maxims taught,
That separate rights
are lost in mutual love.
(applause)
- Welcome back for
the final round of the 2019
Mississippi Poetry Out
Loud Recitation Contest.
The scores from the first
and second rounds have been
tabulated and the three
highest-scoring contestants
will now each
recite a third poem.
The scores they earn in this
round will be added to their
standing scores and will be
used to select Mississippi's
representative to the Poetry Out
Loud National Recitation Contest
to be held in Washington, D.C.,
on April 30th and May 1st.
The contestants in Round Three,
in alphabetical order,
are Victoria Byrd,
Angelita Micele,
and Taylor Mills.
(applause)
Congratulations.
And now let’s begin the third
and final round of the 2019
Mississippi Poetry Out
Loud Recitation Contest.
- “I Find No Peace”
by Sir Thomas Wyatt.
I find no peace, and
all my war is done.
I fear and hope.
I burn and freeze like ice.
I fly above the wind,
yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and
all the world I season.
That loseth nor locketh
holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not—
yet can I scape no wise—
Nor letteth me live
nor die at my device,
And yet of death
it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see, and
without tongue I plain.
I desire to perish,
and yet I ask health.
I love another, and
thus I hate myself.
I feed me in sorrow and
laugh in all my pain;
Likewise displeaseth
me both life and death,
And my delight is
causer of this strife.
(applause)
- “The Ocean”
by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The Ocean has
its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Though there be fury
on the waves,
Beneath them there is none.
The awful spirits of the deep
Hold their communion there;
And there are those
for whom we weep,
The young, the bright, the fair.
Calmly the wearied
seamen rest
Beneath their own blue sea.
The ocean solitudes
are blest,
For there is purity.
The earth has guilt,
the earth has care,
Unquiet are its graves;
But peaceful sleep
is ever there,
Beneath the dark blue waves.
(applause)
- “Always Something More
Beautiful” by Stephen Dunn.
This time I came
to the starting place
with my best running
shoes,
and pure speed
held back for the finish,
came with only love of the clock
and the underfooting
and the other runners.
Each of us would be
testing excellence
and endurance in the other,
though in the past
I’d often veer off
to follow some feral distraction
down a side path,
allowing myself to pursue
something odd or beautiful,
becoming -- allowing-- 
myself to become acquainted
with a few of the ways
not to blame myself
for failing to succeed.
I had come to believe what’s
beautiful had more to do
with daring to take
yourself seriously,
to stay the course,
whatever the course might be.
The person in front
seemed ready to fade,
his long, graceful stride
shortening
as I came up along his side.
I was sure now I’d at
least exceed my best time.
But the man with
the famous final kick
already had begun his move.
Beautiful, I heard
a spectator say,
as if something inevitable
about to come from nowhere
was again on its way.
(applause)
- And now, the announcement
we've all been
waiting to hear, the naming
of our third and second place
finalists, and of our
2019 state champion.
The 2019 Mississippi Poetry
Out Loud third-place finalist is
Angelita Micele.
(applause)
The 2019 Mississippi Poetry
Out Loud second-place finalist
and recipient of a $100
award and a $200 stipend
for her school library is
Victoria Byrd.
(applause)
And now, the 2019
Mississippi Poetry Out Loud
state champion and
recipient of a $200 award,
an all-expense-paid trip
for two to Washington, D .C.,
and a $500 stipend for her
school library is Taylor Mills.
(applause and cheering)
Let’s give all of our winners
a big round of applause.
- Thank you, Michelle.
Congratulations, and a big
thank you to everyone
who contributed to
this year’s finals.
To our the teachers,
students, coaches,
parents, clinicians,
volunteers, and judges,
and to the schools and
organizations that partnered
with the Mississippi Arts
Commission to bring this program
to the students of our state.
Our partners include:
The Yoknapatawpha Arts
Council in Oxford,
the Margaret Walker
Alexander National Research
Center at Jackson
State University,
the Hattiesburg Arts Council
Parkway Heights United
Methodist Church in Hattiesburg,
the Lafayette County
and Oxford Public Library,
Registration for the 2020
Mississippi Poetry Out Loud
program begins on
Monday, May 6th.
Any and all schools that teach
students in the 9th
through 12th grades
are encouraged
to visit our website
and to register.
This concludes our 2019
program of Poetry Out Loud.
We thank you all for attending
and hope to see you next year.
(applause) 
