Poetry Out Loud logo. Photo courtesy of Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture

MARYSVILLE, CA (MPG) – Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture is pleased to announce a second date for local high school students to compete in this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition.  This year’s event will kick off on Saturday, February 3rd. Yuba County students will compete starting at 11 am and Sutter County students will start at 2 pm.

The second date is Thursday evening, February 8th at 6 pm. The location for both events is the Sutter Theater Center for the Arts, 754 Plumas Street in Yuba City.  Both sets of county winners will be announced on Friday, February 9th. These are free events open to the public. Students interested in competing should pre-register at yubasutterarts.org.  If you are unfamiliar with Poetry Out Loud, it is a poetry recitation event for high school students. Labeled a “Pizza and Poetry Party,” all participating students receive gift cards, and pizza, and the three winners from each County will receive cash prizes.

“We became aware of several scheduling conflicts for students with our originally scheduled February 3rd date,” said David Read, Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture Executive Director. “We wanted to ensure that all students wishing to compete had the opportunity to do so we added the second date at which students from both counties can participate,” he added.

Participating students will have selected poems from the Poetry Out Loud online anthology of nearly 1,000 poems. They recite the poem from memory and are judged based on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, accuracy, level of complexity, evidence of understanding, and overall performance.

So why all this fuss about poetry? Is it still a relevant art form? Former California Poet Laureate and the creator of the Poetry Out Loud program, Dana Gioia, wrote, “Poetry teachers especially at the high school and undergraduate levels, should spend less time on analysis and more on performance. Poetry needs to be liberated from literary criticism. Poems should be memorized, recited, and performed. The sheer joy of the art must be emphasized. The pleasure of performance is what first attracts children to poetry, the sensual excitement of speaking and hearing the words of the poem. Performance was also the teaching technique that kept poetry vital for centuries. Maybe it also holds the key to poetry’s future.”

The two county winners will go on to compete in the California Poetry Out Loud state finals on March 17-18 in Sacramento.  At the state level, one winner will be selected to represent California in the national competition in Washington, D.C. in May.  For additional information about this and other Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture programs and events, call 530-742-ARTS or write to [email protected].