2015 NATIONAL FINALS

Lisner Auditorium The George Washington University Washington, DC POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS I The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $5 billion to strengthen the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the NEA at arts.gov.

The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation seeks to be a leader in shaping a receptive climate for poetry by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry through innovative partnerships, prizes, and programs.

Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation develops partnerships and programs that reinforce artists’ capacity to create and present work, advance access to and participation in the arts, and promote a more sustainable arts ecology. The Foundation was created in 1979 and is a private non-profit organization that is closely allied with the region’s state arts councils and the National Endowment for the Arts. It combines funding from state and federal resources with private support from corporations, foundations, and individuals to address needs in the arts from a regional, national, and international perspective.

Poetry Out Loud is a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and the State and Jurisdictional Arts Agencies of the United States.

Welcome to our nation’s capital and the final competition of the 2015 Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Poetry Out Loud. Since the program began in 2005, more than 2.7 million students across the country have committed a poem to memory, and this year alone, some 365,000 students representing more than 2,300 high schools participated in Poetry Out Loud. Fifty-three students Photo by Strauss Peyton Studios Photo courtesy of the have advanced to the National Finals—one from every state, the District of Poetry Foundation Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. We congratulate all our state champions on their successes and recognize the courage and hard work that brought them here today. Of course they are not alone, but joined by the family, friends, teachers, and state arts agency staff and partners who have supported and inspired them along the way. We offer an enthusiastic round of applause to all those who have journeyed with these students—thank you.

Every audience member, whether with us in person, watching the live webcast, or following us at #POL15, will witness how a poem is transformed when taken off the page and spoken aloud. These students have explored the nuances of poet and poem and brought their own experience to the interpretation and delivery. It is their task to return the poem to the world, to make it new. You will hear poems written centuries ago and others newly minted, and you will hear a few poems recited more than once—consider what each unique perspective reveals.

Poetry is an ancient art that still thrives in our popular culture because of its magical simplicity, its allegiance to imagination and invention, and its ability to distill human thought and feeling into a few pure lines of language. As poet Mary Oliver writes, “Poetry is a life-cherishing force...poems are not words after all but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, and something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” We invite you to listen closely to these recitations and be inspired by their power to connect us to one another, to nourish our intellect, and to light new paths.

A warm welcome to all of our guests, and best of luck to our competitors.

Jane Chu Robert Polito Chairman President National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Foundation

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 1 April 28 9:00 am Semifinal One SEMIFINALS 1:00 pm Semifinal Two PROGRAM 5:00 pm Semifinal Three

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS Eleanor Billington Stephen Young HOSTS Stephen F. Schmidt Elizabeth Acevedo Josephine Reed

FIRST ROUND SECOND ROUND

Intermission ANNOUNCEMENT OF REGIONAL FINALISTS Top eight competitors in each semifinal will recite a third poem THIRD ROUND AWARDS PRESENTATION

ANNOUNCEMENT OF NATIONAL FINALISTS Top three competitors in each semifinal will advance to the National Finals

2 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS April 29 7:00 pm WELCOME Taylor Mali

NATIONAL ROLL CALL OF STATE CHAMPIONS FINALS OPENING REMARKS Jane Chu, Chairman PROGRAM National Endowment for the Arts

FIRST ROUND REMARKS Robert Polito, President Poetry Foundation SECOND ROUND ANNOUNCEMENT OF THREE FINALISTS FINAL ROUND PERFORMANCE Gabriel Kahane

ANNOUNCEMENT OF POETRY OUT LOUD CHAMPION

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 3 National Finals HOST JUDGES HOST AND JUDGES Taylor Mali is one of the most Richard Blanco is the author Nikky Finney is a poet, teacher, well-known poets to have of The Prince of los Cocuyos: and activist. She is co-founder emerged from the poetry slam A Miami Childhood and For All of the Affrilachian Poets, a movement and one of the of Us, One Today: An Inaugural grassroots group of poets of original poets to appear on the Poet’s Journey; and the poetry color living in the Appalachian HBO series Def Poetry Jam. A collections Looking for The region. Finney has written four-time National Poetry Slam Gulf Motel, Directions to the several books of poetry, champion, he is the author of Beach of the Dead, and City of including Rice, Heartwood, and two collections of poetry and a a Hundred Fires. In 2013, Blanco The World Is Round, among book of essays, What Teachers was appointed to serve as others. She received a PEN Make: In Praise of the Greatest the fifth inaugural poet of the Open Book Award, the Benjamin Job in the World. In April of United States. He has received Franklin Award for Poetry; and 2012, Mali completed a 12-year numerous awards for his work, her most recent collection, project of convincing 1,000 including an honorary doctorate Head Off & Split, won the 2011 people to become teachers from Macalester College, and National Book Award for poetry. and marked the occasion by was named a Woodrow Finney currently serves as the donating 12 inches of his hair to Wilson Visiting Fellow. Blanco John H. Bennett, Jr. Endowed the American Cancer Society. is currently working on a Professor of Creative Writing Years ago he was the official full-length memoir and a and Southern Letters at the voice of Burger King. children’s book. University of South Carolina.

4 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS Carol Jago taught English Maria Popova is a critic, writer, Brando Skyhorse won the for 32 years and is associate and the founder and editor 2011 PEN/Hemingway Award director of the California of Brain Pickings, an online and the Sue Kaufman Prize Reading and Literature inventory of cross-disciplinary for First Fiction from the Project at the University of interestingness spanning American Academy of Arts California, Los Angeles. She is art, science, design, history, and Letters for his debut novel, the previous president of the philosophy, psychology, and The Madonnas of Echo Park. National Council of Teachers more. She has written for Wired The book was also a national of English, and in 2014, she UK, The Atlantic, The New York bestseller and a Barnes & Noble was awarded the Adolescent Times, The Huffington Post, and Discover Great New Writers Literacy Thought Leader Award Design Observer, among others, pick. Skyhorse is a graduate of by the International Reading and is a Massachusetts Institute Stanford University and the MFA Association. Jago is the author of Technology Futures of Writers’ Workshop at University of With Rigor for All: Meeting Entertainment Fellow. Popova’s of California at Irvine. In 2014, Common Core Standards for Twitter feed—@brainpicker—has he published the memoir, Take Reading Literature, as well more than 500,000 followers This Man, and currently serves as numerous essays and a and was listed by TIME as the Jenny McKean Moore column on education for the magazine as one of “The 140 Writer-In-Washington at George Los Angeles Times. Best Twitter Feeds of 2012.” Washington University.

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 5 Semifinals HOSTS JUDGES HOSTS AND JUDGES Elizabeth Acevedo was born Josephine Reed is the media Semifinal One and raised in New York City producer for the Public and her poetry is infused with Affairs office at the National Niki Herd holds degrees in her Dominican parents’ bolero Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Creative Writing from the music and her native city’s She produces and hosts the University of Arizona and tough grit. She holds a BA NEA’s weekly podcast, Art Antioch University. Nominated in Performing Arts from The Works, a program that features twice for a Pushcart Prize, she is George Washington University interviews with artists and the recipient of fellowships from and an MFA in Poetry from the creative thinkers. Before coming Cave Canem and the Virginia University of Maryland. With to the NEA, Reed directed Center for the Creative Arts. over twelve years of spoken XM Satellite Radio’s book and Herd’s work has been supported word experience, Acevedo has contemporary theater channel by the Astraea Foundation been a featured performer on and hosted the program, Writers and the Arizona Commission BET, Centric, and Mun2, as well on Writing. In partnership with on the Arts. Her first collection as delivered a TED talk that the NEA, Reed also created of poems, The Language of aired in the spring of 2013. She the series, The Big Read on XM. Shedding Skin, was a finalist has graced stages nationally Passionate about language, she for the Benjamin Saltman and internationally, including has interviewed writers of all Award and the Main Street State Theatre in South Africa, genres throughout her career, Rag Poetry Award. Madison Square Garden, and including novelists, historians, the John F. Kennedy Center for playwrights, and poets. Adrian Matejka’s first collection the Performing Arts. Acevedo of poetry, The Devil’s Garden, is a National Slam Champion, Stephen F. Schmidt has been won the 2002 New York / Beltway Grand Slam Champion, a professional actor for more New England Award, and his and the 2014 Women of the than 30 years, and has lived second collection, Mixology, was World representative for and worked in New York, Los selected for the 2008 National Washington, DC. Her first Angeles, and for the past 25 Poetry Series. His most recent book, Birth-Marked, was years, in the DC-Baltimore book, The Big Smoke, received published in September 2014. area. He is also a teaching artist the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book through Ford’s Theatre and for Award and was a finalist for the past seven years has helped the National Book Award and conduct a course called “Oratory the Pulitzer Prize. Matejka has in American Culture” at Central received two Illinois Arts High School in Prince George’s Council Literary Awards County as well as distance and fellowships from the learning with schools in Arizona, Guggenheim Foundation and Idaho, and Colorado. Recently, the Lannan Foundation. He he performed in A Christmas currently teaches in the MFA Carol at Ford’s, and to help program at Indiana University. honor the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Will McInerney is the co- Lincoln, will be performing in director of Sacrificial Poets, a One Destiny at Ford’s this spring. nationally competing youth poetry organization devoted to fostering social transformation.

6 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS A performer himself, McInerney humanities scholar for Hermana Anderson Wells is the associate Def Poetry Jam, and Gathering is a National Poetry Slam a Hermana/Sister to Sister and education manager at the Studio Ground: A Reader Celebrating finalist and a National Duo Slam was co-chair of the board of Theatre Acting Conservatory in Cave Canem’s First Decade. champion. In 2010, he taught directors for the organization Washington, DC. As a Linehan poetry at the Ramallah Friends Change: Building Social Justice, Artist Scholar, he earned a BFA Hannah Sanghee Park is the School in the Palestinian West Starting in the Classroom. in Acting from the University author of the chapbook Ode Bank. McInerney is currently of Maryland, Baltimore County Days Ode, and her work has working towards a degree in Philippa Hughes founded the (UMBC). Wells has been in many appeared in Petri Press, Poetry Peace, War, and Defense at the Pink Line Project, a calendar of a cappella groups, including the Northwest, and Best New University of North Carolina at all things cool and creative in UMBC Cleftomaniacs, Vox Pop, Poets 2013. Park’s forthcoming Chapel Hill. DC, and writes a widely read and The Lobby. He was recently collection, The Same-Different, blog highlighting the best of seen acting in Brave Spirit was selected by Rae Armantrout Celeste Guzmán Mendoza the DC art scene. She created Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s for the 2014 Walt Whitman is co-founder and co-director the Pink Line Project to inspire Dream and in repertory with Award from the Academy of CantoMundo, a master creative thinking in everyone, to The Two Noble Kinsmen. of American Poets. She has workshop and retreat for build community, and to open received fellowships from the Latina/o poets. Mendoza’s portals to art and culture for Iowa Arts Council, 4Culture, chapbook, Cande, te estoy the curious. Hughes hopes to Semifinal Three and the MacDowell Colony. llamando, won the Poesia Tejana help both residents and visitors Park currently attends the Prize in 1999, and her first see beyond the institutions and Dan Brady is the poetry Writing for Screen & Television full-length poetry manuscript, politics of DC and view the city editor of Barrelhouse, a literary Program at the University of Beneath the Halo, was published as a place filled with incredible magazine and small press based Southern California School of in 2013. She is also a performer people doing amazingly creative in Washington, DC, and the Cinematic Arts. and playwright, and her work things using art, technology, and former editor of American Poet, has been produced in Austin good old-fashioned ingenuity. the journal of the Academy of Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the and San Antonio. Mendoza is American Poets. He is also author of The Ground: Poems currently in a doctoral program Joshua Weiner is the author the author of two chapbooks: and When Blackness Rhymes at the University of Texas at of three books of poetry, most Cabin Fever/Fossil Record and with Blackness. He is also the Austin in Higher Education recently The Figure of a Man Leroy Sequences, and his poems translator of Salvador Espriu’s Administration. Being Swallowed by a Fish. have appeared in Artifice, Big story collection Ariadne in the He is also the editor of At the Lucks, BlazeVox, and Dark Sky, Grotesque Labyrinth. Phillips Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom among others. received the PEN/Joyce Semifinal Two Gunn, and the poetry editor of Osterweil Award and the Great Tikkun magazine. Weiner has Teri Cross Davis is the poetry Lakes Colleges Association Naomi Ayala is the author of received a Whiting Writers’ and lectures coordinator at the New Writers Award for Poetry, three books of poetry: Wild Award, the Rome Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library as well as a 2013 Whiting Animals on the Moon, This Side American Academy of Arts and in Washington, DC. She is the Writers’ Award. He teaches in of Early, and Calling Home: Letters, the Amy Lowell Poetry recipient of fellowships from the Creative Writing program Praise Songs and Incantations. Traveling Scholarship, and he the Ford Foundation, Virginia at Princeton University and is She is the translator of Luis is a Guggenheim Memorial Center for the Creative Arts, director of the Poetry Center at Alberto Ambroggio’s poetry Foundation Fellow. Weiner is and Cave Canem. Cross Davis’s Stony Brook University. volume, The Wind’s Archeology, a professor of English at the poems have been published in winner of the 2013 International University of Maryland. many journals and anthologies, Latino Book Award for Best including Poet Lore, Natural Nonfiction Book Translation. Bridge, Bum Rush the Page: A Ayala has been a visiting

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 7 2015 State Champions ALABAMA FLORIDA LOUISIANA Nicole Louw Baxter R. Murrell Kyla Rose Bates Holy Spirit Catholic School Winter Park High School Zachary High School

ALASKA GEORGIA MAINE Maeva Ordaz Paris J. Stroud Rose Horowitz West Anchorage High School Paulding County High School Mt. Ararat High School

ARIZONA HAWAII MARYLAND Zaskia Natalie Villa Ari Dalbert Kyle Fox Shreve Nogales High School Homeschool Tuscarora High School

ARKANSAS IDAHO MASSACHUSETTS Carol Pollard Cheyenne A. Schultz Caroline Sprague Osceola High School Teton High School Monument Mountain Regional High School

CALIFORNIA ILLINOIS Levi Lakota Lowe Annabelle Emuze MICHIGAN Sonora High School Springfield Southeast High School Coral Brantly Petoskey High School

COLORADO INDIANA Jeana Lovett Emma Libersky MINNESOTA Liberty High School Plymouth High School Cameron Patricia Downey The Blake School

CONNECTICUT IOWA Owen Elphick Josie Kasik MISSISSIPPI Edwin O. Smith High School Sergeant Bluff-Luton High School Joy Cariño Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science DELAWARE KANSAS Hannah R. Sturgis Leanne Chun Polytech High School Olathe South High School MISSOURI Maya Michelle Bryant Emil E. Holt Senior High School DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA KENTUCKY Daiana M. James Haley Bryan Benjamin Banneker Academic Grant County High School MONTANA High School Taylor Ann Rogers Willard Alternative High School

8 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 2015 State Champions NEBRASKA OKLAHOMA UNITED STATES Out of more than Amanda Pohlman Edson Alvarado VIRGIN ISLANDS 365,000 contestants Skutt Catholic High School Bethany High School Jonathon Qualls in the 2015 Poetry Antilles School Out Loud Recitation NEVADA OREGON Contest, these UTAH Dominique Groffman Gypsy Prince are the 53 State Douglas High School Academy of Arts & Academics Sadie Belle Merkley Box Elder High School Champions from all fifty states, the NEW HAMPSHIRE PENNSYLVANIA District of Columbia, Dessaline Etienne Elliot G. Davidson VERMONT Goffstown High School Lewisburg Area High School Samuel Boudreau Puerto Rico, and the Bellows Free Academy U.S. Virgin Islands. NEW JERSEY PUERTO RICO Congratulations Beatrice Dimaculangan Roberto Jr. Claudio Montes VIRGINIA to all! Jonathan Dayton High School Escuela Superior Tecnólogica Ahkei Togun Manuel Mediavilla Negrón Tallwood High School

NEW MEXICO Rachel Patty RHODE ISLAND WASHINGTON Raton High School Zoe Butler Alexandra Hanesworth Portsmouth Abbey School Anacortes High School

NEW YORK Nichola Metzger SOUTH CAROLINA WEST VIRGINIA Brighton High School Joshua T. Mugabe Neely Seams York Preparatory Academy Greenbrier East High School NORTH CAROLINA Casey Ryan Goggin SOUTH DAKOTA WISCONSIN Pinecrest High School Ashley Brage Ian Walls Watertown High School Milwaukee High School of the Arts

NORTH DAKOTA Zachary Howatt TENNESSEE WYOMING Northern Cass School Grace Whitten Dylan James Collins Battle Ground Academy Arvada-Clearmont High School

OHIO Sarah Binau TEXAS Bexley High School Sam Terry Keystone School

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 9 NEW YORK Nichola Metzger ‘’The Pulley’’ by George Herbert Semifinal ‘’In Memoriam: Martin Luther King, Jr.’’ by June Jordan One RHODE ISLAND Zoe Butler ‘’Ode to the Midwest’’ by Kevin Young April 28, 9:00 am ‘’The Good-Morrow’’ by John Donne

DELAWARE Hannah R. Sturgis ‘’The Applicant’’ by Sylvia Plath ‘’Snake Oil, Snake Bite’’ by Dilruba Ahmed

CONNECTICUT Owen Elphick ‘’Digging’’ by Seamus Heaney ‘’To Autumn’’ by John Keats

NEW HAMPSHIRE Dessaline Etienne ‘’Weighing In’’ by Rhina P. Espaillat ‘’The Man with the Hoe’’ by Edwin Markham

MAINE Rose Horowitz ‘’Lovers’ Infiniteness’’ by John Donne ‘’Entirely’’ by Louis MacNeice

MASSACHUSETTS Caroline Sprague ‘’Sonnet 15: When I consider everything that grows’’ by William Shakespeare “The Golden Shovel’’ by Terrance Hayes

PENNSYLVANIA Elliot G. Davidson ‘’It Isn’t Me’’ by James Lasdun ‘’Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud’’ by John Donne

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Daiana M. James ‘’Ars Poetica’’ by Archibald MacLeish ‘’Tomorrow’’ by Dennis O’Driscoll

10 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS SOUTH CAROLINA Joshua T. Mugabe ‘’Song of Myself: 35’’ by Walt Whitman ‘’Ozymandias’’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley

MARYLAND Kyle Fox Shreve ‘’Possible Answers to Prayer’’ by Scott Cairns ‘’Dover Beach’’ by Matthew Arnold

NORTH CAROLINA Casey Ryan Goggin ‘’To Elsie’’ by William Carlos Williams ‘’The Applicant’’ by Sylvia Plath

NEW JERSEY Beatrice Dimaculangan ‘’The Bones of My Father’’ by Etheridge Knight “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown’’ by Walt Whitman

VERMONT Samuel Boudreau ‘’Novel’’ by Arthur Rimbaud ‘’Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg’’ by Richard Hugo

WEST VIRGINIA Neely Seams ‘’Mi Historia’’ by David Dominguez ‘’Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before’’ by Aphra Behn

OHIO Sarah Binau ‘’After Apple Picking’’ by Robert Frost ‘’The Author to Her Book’’ by Anne Bradstreet

UNITED STATES Jonathon Qualls VIRGIN ISLANDS ‘’Advice to a Prophet’’ by Richard Wilbur ‘’Ecology’’ by Jack Collom

VIRGINIA Ahkei Togun “Football” by Louis Jenkins “The Canonization” by John Donne

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 11 NEBRASKA Amanda Pohlman ‘’There Are Birds Here’’ by Jamaal May Semifinal ‘’Mad Song’’ by William Blake Two ARKANSAS Carol Pollard ‘’a song in the front yard’’ by Gwendolyn Brooks April 28, 1:00 pm ‘’The Bones of My Father’’ by Etheridge Knight

WISCONSIN Ian Walls “The American Soldier” by Philip Freneau “Hysteria” by Dionisio D. Martínez

MISSISSIPPI Joy Cariño ‘’It Isn’t Me’’ by James Lasdun ‘’To David, About His Education’’ by Howard Nemerov

INDIANA Emma Libersky ‘’A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown’’ by Walt Whitman ‘’Ode on a Grecian Urn’’ by John Keats

PUERTO RICO Roberto Jr. Claudio Montes ‘’On Monsieur’s Departure’’ by Queen Elizabeth I ‘’Danse Russe’’ by William Carlos Williams

KENTUCKY Haley Bryan ‘’Domestic Situation’’ by Ernest Hilbert ‘’For Love’’ by Robert Creeley

GEORGIA Paris J. Stroud ‘’The Death of Allegory’’ by Billy Collins ‘’Ode on a Grecian Urn’’ by John Keats

LOUISIANA Kyla Rose Bates “I’m a Fool to Love You” by Cornelius Eady “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” by Emily Dickinson

12 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS TENNESSEE Grace Whitten ‘’The Applicant’’ by Sylvia Plath ‘’Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings’’ by Larry Levis

MISSOURI Maya Michelle Bryant “Self-Help” by Michael Ryan “The Ocean” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

MICHIGAN Coral Brantly ‘’The Gaffe’’by C.K. Williams ”Song for the Last Act’’ by Louise Bogan

OKLAHOMA Edson Alvarado ‘’Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg’’ by Richard Hugo ‘’A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown’’ by Walt Whitman

ILLINOIS Annabelle Emuze ‘’Celebration for June 24’’ by Thomas McGrath ‘’The Blackstone Rangers’’ by Gwendolyn Brooks

FLORIDA Baxter R. Murrell ‘’Baudelaire’’ by Delmore Schwartz ‘’A Locked House’’ by W.D. Snodgrass

ALABAMA Nicole Louw ‘’Memory as a Hearing Aid’’ by Tony Hoagland ‘’On Virtue’’ by Phillis Wheatley

KANSAS Leanne Chun ‘’The Pulley’’ by George Herbert ‘’And Soul’’ by Eavan Boland

IOWA Josie Kasik ‘’For the young who want to’’ by Marge Piercy ‘’Abandoned Farmhouse’’ by Ted Kooser

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 13 MINNESOTA Cameron Patricia Downey “The World Is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth Semifinal “Ode to the Midwest” by Kevin Young Three COLORADO Jeana Lovett ‘’The Hospital Window’’ by James L. Dickey April 28, 5:00 pm ‘’An Autumn Sunset’’ by Edith Wharton

NEW MEXICO Rachel Patty “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll “Over and Under” by John Brehm

MONTANA Taylor Ann Rogers ‘’The Applicant’’ by Sylvia Plath ‘’Planetarium’’ by Adrienne Rich

WASHINGTON Alexandra Hanesworth ‘’It Isn’t Me’’ by James Lasdun ‘’The Empty Dance Shoes’’ by Cornelius Eady

NEVADA Dominique Groffman ‘’Planetarium’’ by Adrienne Rich ‘’To Live with a Landscape’’ by Constance Urdang

WYOMING Dylan James Collins “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen “every single day” by John Straley

NORTH DAKOTA Zachary Howatt ‘’Machines’’ by Michael Donaghy ‘’The Tables Turned’’ by William Wordsworth

CALIFORNIA Levi Lakota Lowe ‘’A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown’’ by Walt Whitman ‘’They Feed They Lion’’ by Philip Levine

14 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS UTAH Sadie Belle Merkley ‘’I Remember, I Remember’’ by Thomas Hood ‘’Full Moon’’ by Elinor Wylie

IDAHO Cheyenne A. Schultz ‘’A Poison Tree’’ by William Blake ‘’The Uniform’’ by Marvin Bell

OREGON Gypsy Prince ‘’Mrs. Caldera’s House of Things’’ by Gregory Djanikian ‘’Backdrop addresses cowboy’’ by Margaret Atwood

ALASKA Maeva Ordaz ‘’The Nail’’ by C.K. Williams ‘’Ode on a Grecian Urn’’ by John Keats

TEXAS Sam Terry ‘’The Windhover’’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins ‘’Monet Refuses the Operation’’ by Lisel Mueller

SOUTH DAKOTA Ashley Brage ‘’For the young who want to’’ by Marge Piercy ‘’Ovation’’ by Carol Muske-Dukes

HAWAII Ari Dalbert ‘’Old Men Playing Basketball’’ by B.H. Fairchild ‘’Sonnet 55: Not marble, nor the gilded monuments’’ by William Shakespeare

ARIZONA Zaskia Natalie Villa ‘’Movement Song’’ by Audre Lorde ‘’Deliberate’’ by Amy Uyematsu

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS 15 PRIZES PRODUCTION MUSICAL GUEST Michael Baron (director) is the Chris Burns is a DC-based Gabriel Kahane NATIONAL FINALS Artistic Director of Lyric Theatre music producer, promoter, and Hailed by Rolling Stone as “one of Oklahoma and has directed DJ with over 15 years experience. of the year’s very best albums,” 1st place over 80 productions at theaters Burns is regularly called upon Gabriel Kahane’s major label $20,000 award across the country. Most to play at some of DC’s most debut, The Ambassador (Sony recently at Lyric, he directed Les acclaimed venues, including Music), is a meditation on the 2nd place Miserables, A Little Night Music, U Street Music Hall, Flash, underbelly of Los Angeles seen $10,000 award An Inspector Calls, Triangle, Eighteenth Street Lounge, and through the lens of ten street Disney’s Tarzan, Big River, The the 9:30 Club. He has released addresses. The acclaimed album 3rd place Glass Menagerie, The Mystery of original music and remixes, and was conceived for the stage as $5,000 award Irma Vep, Call Me Madam with engineered projects for labels well, in a production directed by Tony winner Beth Leavel, Spring such as Italians Do It Better, Tony winner John Tiffany and 4th–9th places Awakening, A Christmas Carol, Nurvous, Quantize/Unquantize, seen this season at the Brooklyn Ragtime, and Oliver! Baron’s New Jersey Records, Plant, Academy of Music’s Next Wave $1,000 award other directing highlights and his own recording label, Festival, as well as at the Center include the recent production Mysteries of the Mind. Burns is for the Art of Performance at The schools of the top of Peter and the Starcatcher at also a licensed real estate agent the University of California, Los nine finalists will receive Zach Theatre, this past season’s in DC and Maryland. Angeles. A tireless collaborator, $500 for the purchase of production of A Christmas Carol http://chrisburnsdc.com Kahane’s recent credits include poetry books. at Ford’s Theatre, and A Year http://soundcloud.com/chrisburns a track on this year’s Beck Song with Frog and Toad at Adventure Reader (Warby Parker), an The fourth-place student in Theatre, for which he received a album that also features Jack each semifinal competition 2012 Helen Hayes award for Best White, Jarvis Cocker, Laura will receive an honorable Direction of a Musical. He earned Marling, and Beck himself; an mention award of $1,000, his MFA in Directing from Brown appearance on Blake Mills’ Heigh with $500 to their school University/Trinity Repertory Ho; several projects with Sufjan Company and a BA in Theatre Stevens; as well as performances library for the purchase of from Wake Forest University. and recordings with Chris Thile poetry books. of Punch Brothers, with whom Gabriel toured this spring. STATE FINALS Dividing his time between More than $50,000 in the club, the theater, and the concert hall, Kahane has been cash and school stipends commissioned by, among were awarded at state final others, the Brooklyn Academy competitions. of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Los

Awards will be made in the form of Angeles Philharmonic, Kronos lump sum cash payouts, reportable Quartet, and Orpheus Chamber to the IRS. Tax liabilities are the sole ASL INTERPRETERS Orchestra. His musical, February responsibility of the winners and Finals House, was commissioned and their families. Jessica Gabrian and Andrea K. Smith produced by the Public Theater  in New York, where it received Semifinals its world premiere in 2012. He Cheryl Ringel and Heidi Johnson lives in Brooklyn.

16 POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS POETRY OUT LOUD IS MANAGED AT THE STATE LEVEL BY THE NATIONAL FINALS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARE THE RESULT OF THE Alabama State Council New Jersey State Council REMARKABLE EFFORTS OF on the Arts on the Arts Karen Newell and Mid Atlantic Alaska State Council on the Arts New Mexico Arts Arts Foundation, Peggy Arizona Commission on the Arts New York State Council Dahlquist, Michael Baron, DJ on the Arts Arkansas Arts Council Chris Burns, guest hosts and North Carolina Arts Council California Arts Council judges, and staff at the National North Dakota Council on the Endowment for the Arts and Colorado Creative Industries Arts Poetry Foundation. Connecticut Office of the Arts Ohio Arts Council Delaware Division of the Arts Oklahoma Arts Council DC Commission on the Oregon Arts Commission Arts and Humanities Pennsylvania Council on the Florida Division of Cultural Arts Affairs Instituto de Cultura Georgia Council for the Arts Puertorriquena Hawaii State Foundation on Rhode Island State Council Culture and the Arts on the Arts Idaho Commission on the Arts South Carolina Arts Commission Illinois Arts Council Agency South Dakota Arts Council Indiana Arts Commission Tennessee Arts Commission Iowa Arts Council Texas Commission on the Arts Kansas Creative Arts Utah Division of Arts & Industries Commission Museums Kentucky Arts Council Vermont Arts Council Louisiana Division of the Arts Virgin Islands Council Maine Arts Commission on the Arts Maryland State Arts Council Virginia Commission Massachusetts Cultural Council for the Arts Michigan Council for Arts and Washington State Arts Cultural Affairs Commission: Arts WA Minnesota State Arts Board West Virginia Division of Culture and History Mississippi Arts Commission Wisconsin Arts Board Missouri Arts Council Wyoming Arts Council Montana Arts Council and many incredible partners Nebraska Arts Council Nevada Arts Council New Hampshire State Council on the Arts

POETRY OUT LOUD 2015 NATIONAL FINALS III “Think not of winning, but of the message of your words. They will carry you further than you know, on and off stage.” Anita Norman, 2014 National Poetry Out Loud Champion

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