2023

Hi, everyone.

My name is David Toland, and I'm honored to serve as Governor Laura Kelly's lieutenant governor for the great state of Kansas.

The program you're about to watch showcases some of our state's most talented young people performing at this year's Poetry Out Loud State Finals in Topeka.

The statewide competition started at the local level in classrooms and schools across Kansas.

Each of the students you're about to see then competed at the regional level before advancing to this year's state finals.

Engagement in the creative arts like these poetry readings, provides so much value to Kansas students.

It helps build self-confidence while spotlighting the next generation of thinkers, artists, communicators and leaders in our communities.

We're excited to share this outstanding program with you, and we're proud that the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission has partnered once again with Poetry Out Loud to support a variety of arts and cultural development programs throughout the Sunflower State.

So to get the program started, it's now my pleasure to introduce our host, Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhal.

We hope you enjoy Poetry Out Loud.

Welcome to the 2023 Kansas Poetry Out Loud Recitation Recitation Contest.

I am your host, Traci Brimhal the current poet laureate of the State of Kansas, and I am so grateful that we are able to gather in the name of poetry.

Speaking of gratitude, I want to take this moment and thank our sponsors, the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Without them, none of this would be possible.

Pablo Neruda said "“On our earth before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished.

And that is why we know poetry is like bread, It should be shared by all By all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity"”.

It is in that spirit of poetry as nourishment, and that poetry is spoken that gathers us here today.

Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the nation's youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance.

Reciting great poetry connects us to an ageless art form, to the timelessness of great poets, to abstract ideas and higher critical thinking, and ultimately to deeper life experiences.

Here to explain how the event unfolded across the state this year is Kate VanSteenhuyse Director of Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission and State Poetry OutLoud Coordinator Cheryl Germann.

In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation partnered with State arts agencies across the country to inaugurate Poetry Out Loud, a national recitation contest.

The Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission is proud to provide Poetry Out Loud program to high school students statewide and is excited to partner with KTWU to bring poetry into living rooms across Kansas and celebrate the long road and hard work these students took to.

Get here today.

Poetry Out Loud begins with teachers and students in classrooms and schools across the state.

Each school is able to send one representative to their area's regional competition.

The number of competitors at each of the four regional competitions determines how many advance to today's state finals.

And today, one Kansas student will become the Kansas Poetry Out Loud Champion and advance to the National Finals.

Thank you to Kansas Regional Coordinators Stacy Chesnut, Cynthia Roth, Kayla Pruitt and CodI Fenwick for your hard work in bringing this program to all parts of the state.

It is now my pleasure to introduce our panel of distinguished judges.

Judges, Please stand when I call your name, a seventh generation Kansan.

Eric McHenry teaches English at Washburn University and was the poet laureate of Kansas from 2015 to 2017.

His books of poetry include Pot Scrubber Lullabies, which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and Odd Evening, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

His poems have appeared in the Three Penny Review, The New Republic, The Yale Review, The Times Literary Supplement and Poetry Northwest, from whom he received the Theodore Roethke Prize.

He also writes essays and criticism for the New York Times, The American Scholar, The Boston Globe and other publications.

Laura Lorson is a broadcast announcer, audio producer, show director and editor for Kansas Public Radio in Lawrence, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, She has worked in public broadcasting for KPR, NPR, the BBC and the BBC World Service for more than 30 years, with a focus on stories pertaining to the fine arts, humanities and liberal arts.

Her work is focused on the idea that the humanities are not optional, that they are an integral part of modern life and are necessary bedrock to the works and ideas that make life richer and more fulfilling.

Cash Hollistah is a national hip hop recording artist, poet, speaker, arts educator and philanthropist.

Born and raised in Salina, Cash cites a creative writing class he took as a sophomore in high school as the main catalyst for pursuing a career in music.

Cash's music has been featured on MTV, VH1 and Postmates.

His work with Humanities Kansas as a speaker, as well as his work with students in schools and churches across the state, have gained him a reputation as a community leader.

Currently, Hollistah sits on the board of directors of the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

Brennan Bestwick is a poet from Randolph, Kansas, who earned his M.A.

from Kansas State University.

He is an AWP Intro to Journal's award winner and the recent recipient of a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award for his poem Let Us Pray.

His writing appears in Best New Poets, Colorado Review, The Journal, Winter Tangerine, The Offing, EcoTheo Review and Elsewhere.

Robert Hubbard, today's Accuracy Judge, has been on the periphery of the arts community for some time.

In addition to working as a script supervisor for local filmmakers Kevin Willmott and Patrick Ray, among others, he has made his own short films and has written film and music related content for websites and underground publications such as Film Score Monthly, Microfilm, and 366 Weird Movies.

We are so grateful to have these accomplished judges with us today.

The writer Zadie Smith said "“Time is how you spend your love and we are so glad that these judges are offering their time to their love of poetry.

Here is how the contest works.

Students have each selected three poems from the Poetry Out Loud anthology.

Within their selections, they must include a poem that was written before the 20th century and a poem that is 25 lines or fewer.

In each round, students will be called in a randomly determined order to recite one of the three poems he or she has prepared.

Before each recitation the students should identify the title of the poem and the author only.

After the student finishes, the judges, without conferring, will take a moment to individually mark their evaluation sheets.

The evaluation sheets will be collected and quickly verified.

The next student will be called onto the stage to recite their poem.

During each round of the contest the judges will assess each recitation on these criteria.

Physical presence and posture.

Voice projection and articulation.

Appropriateness of dramatization Evidence of understanding, and overall performance.

In addition, each recitation is scored for accuracy.

Following the second round, the three students receiving the highest total scores in the first two rounds will be the finalists competing in round three.

After round three presentation the final scores will be tabulated.

The student with the highest total score following round three will win the Kansas Poetry Out Loud competition.

Let's get started.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage.

Allie Cloyd.

Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye.

The River is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the bird house.

The tear is famous briefly to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth.

More famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets.

Sticky children in grocery lines.

Famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous or a buttonhole.

Not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

Please help me welcome to the stage, Petr Sotola.

Art versus trade by James Weldon Johnson.

Trade.

Trade versus Art.

Brain.

Brain versus heart.

Oh, the earthiness of these hard, hardy times when clinking dollars and jingling dimes join all the final music of the soul life as an octopus with but this creed that all the world was made to serve.

His greed.

Trade has spread out.

His mighty myriad claw.

And drawn into its foul, polluted maw.

The brightest and the best well nigh has he drained dry the sacred fount of truth, and is forsooth He has left yet some struggling streams from it to go.

He has contaminated So their flow, that truth scarce Is it true?

Poor art with struggling gasp like strangles dying in his mighty grasp, he locks his grimy fingers bout her snowy throat so tender.

Is there no power to rescue her?

Protect defend her.

Shall art be left to perish?

Shall all the images her shrines cherish be left to this iconoclast to vulgar trade?

Oh, then mankind had less of brain and more of heart.

Oh, did the world had less of trade and more of art.

Then would there be less grinding down the poor, Then would men learn to love each other more; For trade stalks like a giant through the land bearing aloft the rich in his high hand while down beneath his mighty ponderous tread, he crushes those who cry for daily bread.

Please help me welcome to the stage Jaden Huehl.

Free Radical by Alison C Rollins Before Gilgamesh invented the Kaleidoscope and Galileo The Rubik's Cube before the Scimitar Horned oryx went missing Before the tamarind trees went bare for the stars, eyelids were wrapped in tin foil before the leaves could gnaw on water before electrons made donations before the owl wore a mask, before the wind had a sound, before the moon had a name and the smoke a spine before tulips crossed their legs Before the tongue was armored before the ghosts rode centaurs to riots before the cyberspace was culled and bellybutton sewn to wombs before the taste had an after before intellect became property and thunder premeditated before the new new world Before a stone wished to be more than a stone Before we had a change of clothes Before the grass was colorblind Before the rivers lost their fingers and the rain stopped teething Before the kings were all behead The grave digger, neither young nor old before a lion was still a lion before the girls were all killed Before the trapeze gave way.

We hung suspended in time by the arches of our curved feet And this tickled the gods tickled them to death.

And I think our silence cut us loose.

Let us go falling from the doubt, secretly thrilled at the hands and ever so eager to break.

Please help me welcome to the stage, Juan Garcia.

And if I did, what then?

By George Gascoigne.

And if I did, what then?

Are you aggrieved therefore?

The sea hath fish for every man.

And what would you have more?

Thus did my mistress once amaze my mind with doubt and popped the question for the nonce to beat my brains about.

Where to I thus replied, Each fisherman can wish that all the seas at every tide were his alone to fish, and so did I.

In vain.

But since it may not be, let such fish there as find the gain and leave the loss for me.

and with such luck and loss, I will content myself till tides of turning time may toss such fissures on the shelf, and when they stick on sands that every man may see, then what I laugh and clap my hands as they do now at me.

Please help me welcome to the stage Victoria Jelks.

Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air usable as earth when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct brain matter diastole, systole, reflex action when it is finally one, when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians.

This man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien.

This man superb in love and logic.

This man shall be remembered.

Oh, not with statues rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life.

The lives flashing, his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage, Alissa Berrie Consider the hands that write this letter.

By Aracelis Girmay after Marina Wilson.

Consider the hands that write this letter left palm pressed flat against the paper, as we have done before over my heart in peace or reverence to the sea, some beautiful thing I saw once felt once snow falling like rice flung from a Giants wedding or strangest of strange birds, and consider then the right hand and how it is a fist within which a sharpened utensil similar to the way I've held a spade, the horses reins loping the very fist I've seen from roads through Limay & Estelí.

For years I've come to sit this way one hand open, one hand close, like a farmer who puts down seed and gathers up food will come from that farm.

Or Yes, it is like the way I've danced my left hand open around a shoulder, right hand inside of another hand.

And how I pray, I pray for this to be my way.

Sweet Work alluded to in the body's position to its paper left hand, right hand like an eye open an eye closed one hand flat against the trap door, the other hand knocking knock.

While we prepare for round two, let's take a moment to meet some of our contestants.

My name is Alissa Berrie.

I'm a senior at Olathe Northwest High School.

This is my first time at Poetry Out Loud.

It's pretty exciting.

A little nerve wracking.

So my name is Petr Sotola.

I'm a senior at Gerard High School, and I'm a foreign exchange student from Czech Republic.

It is my first year competing and it's been wonderful.

I am Allie Cloyd from Manhattan High School in Manhattan, Kansas, and I'm a junior this year.

This is my second year competing in poetry out loud, and I enjoyed it a lot last year, knew I wanted to come back and I always enjoy meeting other people who are interested in and love poetry and getting exposed to a lot of new poetry through Poetry Out Loud.

I chose "“Consider the Hands that Write this Letter"” by Aracelis Girmay "“Truth is, I would like to escape myself"” by Nour Al Ghraowi and Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee by Emily Bronte, all of which are written by strong female individuals that reflect my writing style.

So first poem that I chose is Art versus Trade by James Weldon Johnson.

And I really like the poem because it's talking about their poverty and about like poor people versus rich people, which I find as a quite interesting topic.

And then I chose the Tyger by William Blake, and I just really like that one poem because it was in one TV show that I used to watch with my parents called The Mentalist.

My first poem, Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye is about kind of what famous can mean in everyday life and some beautiful things all around us that are maybe famous to each other.

And I just think it's a fun, really beautiful poem.

My second poem is Meeting at an Airport by Taha Muhammad Ali.

It's a little bit more of a story of two people who are really close but then are separated for a long time and then sort of reconnect.

But it's not quite the same after as many years.

And the third poem, The Paradox, I think is really cool.

Every time I read these poems, there's something new to find.

Peeling back the layers of all the different things that the author was trying to communicate through them.

And I think the paradox is really cool.

At least my interpretation.

The Speaker is sort of a version of death and as the name suggests, is very paradoxical elements about death.

But in the end, it's kind of about the idea that you can find liberation and freedom in death.

And death is not what we make it sometimes I like poetry because it's just a way to express yourself very passionately and just it's an art form of expression.

About poetry.

I think I personally like music and I think that music is basically just poetry with like a companion, like a guitar, some piano and just a melody and everything.

So since I've ever been since, I've always been drawn to music.

I have been always drawn to poetry as well, because it's for me kind of the same thing.

I am a part of my forensics team at my school and so started being exposed to a little bit of poetry through that and just kept wanting to find out more and look into more poems.

I think there's just things that we can say through poetry that we can't say through other forms of speech or other forms of writing.

I do often write poems.

I'm actually the president of the poetry club at my school, my love writing poems as a coping mechanism and just a way to express myself.

When it comes to writing poems.

I have written a few poems.

I have written a few songs.

Because songs are basically poem but with music, like I said, it's been good.

I've really enjoyed doing that.

I haven't tried to write much of my own poetry outside of maybe the required English class poem.

At least for right now.

I enjoy a lot more the reading and sort of literary analysis of poetry.

Of course, poetry is just it's a way to express who you are and have your voice heard.

Absolutely.

I would encourage that because I think there is a lot of lot of smartness in poems and a lot of them have a good point.

I definitely would.

There is maybe a little bit of stigma around poetry, especially for teenagers and high schoolers.

There's so much more out there than the few nature poems that we're exposed to in English class or a haiku.

Right.

And so I think there's something for everyone when it comes to poetry, and I would definitely encourage people to just discover more of it.

We will now begin the recitations for round two.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage.

Allie Cloyd Meeting at an airport by Taha Muhammad Ali.

You asked me once on our way back from the midmorning trip to the spring, what do you hate and who do you love?

And I answered from behind the eyelashes of my surprise, but rushing in me like the shadow cast by cloud of starlings.

I hate departure, I love the spring and the path to the spring.

And I worship the middle hours of morning.

And you laughed and the almond tree blossomed and the thicket grew loud with nightingales a question now four decades old.

I salute that question's answer and an answer as old as your departure.

I salute that answers question.

And today it's preposterous.

Here we are at a friendly airport by the slimmest of chances.

And we meet ah, Lord.

We meet.

And here you are asking again.

It's absolutely preposterous.

I recognized you, but you didn't recognize me.

Is it you?

But you wouldn't believe it.

And suddenly you burst out and ask if you are really you, what do you hate and who do you love?

And I answered my blood, fleeing the whole rushing in me like the shadow cast by a cloud of starlings.

I hate departure and I love the spring and the path to the spring.

And I worship the middle hours of morning and you wept and the flowers bowed their heads and doves in the silk of their sorrow stumbled.

Please help me.

Welcome to the Stage.

Petr Sotola The Tyger by William Blake.

Tyger, tyger burning bright In The Forest of the Night.

What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry in what distance deeps or skies burn the fire of thine eyes on what wings dare he aspire What the hand, dare seize the fire?

and what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat what dread hand and what dread feet.

What a hammer, What a chain In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil?

what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears And watered heaven with their tears Did he smile his work to see Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger burning bright In the forests of the night What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Please help me welcome to the stage Jaden Huehl It is not by Valerie Martinez We have the body of a woman, an arch over the ground.

But there is no danger.

Her hair falls spine bowed But no one is with her.

The desert?

Yes, with its cacti or sage sidewinders.

She is not in danger.

If we notice there are tracks of animals moving east toward the sunrise and the light is about to touch a woman's body without possession.

Here there are no girls bones in the earth marked with violets a cholla blooms is just two feet away It blooms.

There is a man like her father who wakes to a note saying, I have gone for a day to the desert.

Now he knows she is in danger.

He will try to anticipate what happens to a young woman, how it will happen, how he will deal with the terrible.

In him he feels he knows this somehow.

He knows because there are men he knows who are capable.

This place she has gone to where.

But it doesn't matter.

There is, first of all, the heat which scorches snakes with their coils and open mouths.

Men who go there with the very thing in mind, the very thing it is the desert on its own, miles beyond what anyone can see.

Not peaceful nor vengeful.

It does not bow down.

It is not danger.

I cannot speak of it without easing or troubling myself.

It is not panorama, nor theater.

I do not know.

It is conception.

The gifts or burdens I bear, whether arch a prayer or danger, they can happen.

Yes, we conceived them.

This very woman I know the man does sit tortured.

The desert created merely embodies its place and watch us lay our visions.

Oh, God.

Upon it.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage.

Juan Garcia.

What Horror to Wake at Night by Lorine Niedecker What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light time is white mosquitoes bite I've spent my life on nothing The thought that stings How are you?

Nothing Sitting around with somethings wife buzz and burn is all I learned.

I've spent my life on nothing I'm pillowed and padded Pale and puffing, lifting household stuffing, carpets, dishes, benches, fishes I've spent my life in nothing.

Please help me welcome to the stage.

Victoria Jelks.

Battle-Hymn of the Republic By Julia Ward Howe Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory of the Coming of the Lord.

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

He has loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword.

His truth is marching on.

I have seen him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps.

They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps I can read his righteous sentence in the dim and flaring lamps.

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel, as ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heels Since God is marching on He had sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.

He is sifting out the hearts of men before, his judgment seat.

Oh, be swift, my soul to answer him be jubilant my feet Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lillies Christ was born across the sea with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me as he died to make men holy, let us die, to make men free While God is marching on Please help me Welcome to the stage Alissa Berrie.

Truth is, I would like to escape myself By Nour Al Ghraowi Truth is I would like to escape myself Detach my body from my skin, peel it layer by layer to uncover beneath the surface of petals and thorns piled up year after year who I am and who I want to be.

I want to be the flower that grows in the dirt, the feather that flies free between the cracks of fences.

A wise woman once told me, Don't worry about you.

Worry about who you could be.

I want to be the woman who sits on a desk and writes pieces of oceans.

Rivers on a white space, in a place where imagination has no border.

While the judges compile the scores from the first two rounds, let's meet the rest of our contestants.

So my name is Jaden Huehl and I go to Tipton, Catholic High School.

I'm a senior, but I actually live in Sylvan Grove, Kansas.

So this is my second year in poetry out loud, and it's been a really interesting experience.

So I do forensics.

As a lot of the people who do this event do, and I never did poetry until I started doing poetry out loud.

So it really stretched me on what I've done and what I need to do with my performance, memorization and all of that.

my name is Victoria Jelks I am from Horton High School.

I'm a freshman and I am from Horton, Kansas.

Yes, this is my first time competing and it's been really a positive experience.

It's great to be exposed by different poets, different types of poetry.

So yeah.

Hello, yes, I am Juan Carlos Garcia I go to the Star Splitter Academy and I am a freshman.

For the state competition.

Yes, this is my first time doing poetry out loud, but with previous poetry out loud, things that I've done it, it was an incredible experience and I loved doing it.

So my first poem is Free Radical by Alison C Rollins.

And this poem really spoke to me because it talks about contemplating life and where we're at in it and kind of that thought that we all get late at night and it kind of puts that into word and it makes you really think about Why are we here and what are we doing?

My second poem, It It Is Not by Valerie Martinez, and it kind of goes into how our perception of something really changes who we are within it.

And so I think that's just really true and it's a really good lesson to know.

And then my final poem is An apology for her poetry By Duchess of Newcastle Margaret Cavendish its a very long name, and it's really just about looking inward instead of outward and really seeing who people are for what they are and analyzing things a little bit more than just our first impressions I chose to perform.

Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden, Battle Hymn of the Republic by Julia Ward Howe and songs for the People by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

I chose Frederick Douglass because it really talks about how people years and years ago, just like me, struggle to have freedom and liberty.

And I'm now living through the freedom and liberty that they weren't given because.

Frederick Douglass gave so much to us.

The next two poems were mainly because of the tie between music and poem poetry.

So I am I have always grown up in music I play piano, French horn, drums, and I sing so and my parents are musicians.

So I've just grown up around that environment and it's really, it's really positive.

It's something I couldn't shy away from.

The first two poems that I chose to do were And if I did what then.

by George Gascoigne and what Horror to Awake at Night By Lorine Niedecker and I chose the first poem because of the specific wording that was chosen in the poem.

It fit the categories that were needed and I just personally felt a bit of a connection with it.

Now for the second poem that I chose, I had, I just connected with it instantly.

I loved it a lot.

I think it's one of my favorite poems that I've ever read because of its depth and because of the meaning of the poem, what the speaker is experiencing in the poem and everything about it pretty much.

Poetry is really special because it has a lot of emotion to it, and I think that's kind of the difference between a lot of different things and it's a lot of layers.

So I think good poetry is something that you can read four times and get something out of it four different times.

And so a lot of the really good poetry, the poetry pieces that we're performing today have a lot of those layers and It's something that we feel inside and I will I really connect to these poems.

And so poetry just kind of is a way for me to express how I feel and the things I think about.

Poetry is very appealing because its a form of art that many can describe themselves through, can show their emotions through.

And each time you read a poem, it can show different values, different perspectives.

As you read.

It doesn't get old.

Poetry just seems to me like a way for a writer to deeply express the inner reaches of their heart.

It makes it so that they can say whatever feelings they want to get out, whether metaphorically or literally.

And it makes it so that they can write whatever they want to.

And as a reader of poetry, I feel like it's it's a very connective experience to read poetry and understand what the speaker was intending and what they wanted to express and connect with it on an emotional level.

I think poetry is very challenging because I'm somebody who I like to have a set rule for what I need to do.

And that is something about poetry that's a lot different, is there's no set standards and you can kind of do whatever with it.

And I think that's one thing I kind of struggled with, but I think it's really got me out of my comfort zone and that's really been a big step for me.

I'm learning how to express my emotions and what my emotions really look like, what they mean to me, and just analyzing that.

Yes, I have written a couple of poems, mainly when my emotions are the highest, if I've experienced a really high or low time.

So but it really helps me to get my thoughts through and helps me to retrieve my calmness.

I guess I have written many poems.

I have a poetry notebook that I keep by my bedside in case I want to write anything about a dream that I had, or just write about the experience of the day Writing poetry is just an amazing therapeutic experience for me.

Specifically, I know it's not for everyone, but for me I love it and it just makes me feel, you know, very emotional and it lets me get that out.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think you have to give everything at least a chance once.

And I think poetry is kind of like reading books.

So a lot of people think they don't like to read.

But I argue it's they they just haven't found what they want to read yet.

And so with poetry, maybe the first poet that you read, you're not going to like, but different poets and different ways of poetry and just really getting into it, you can find something that really relates to you and I think that's what poetry is all about, is finding that thing that makes you feel seen and makes you kind of analyze yourself, the world around you, and there's poets out there for everybody.

I would definitely encourage poetry on people my age, people younger people older.

It's really a way to express yourself in that no other way can really.

I believe I would like I said, I don't think it's for everyone, but it definitely connected to me on an emotional level and I believe that others should definitely give it a chance.

Based on the scores from rounds one and two, the top three contestants advance around three.

Will the following students please join me on stage?

The students moving on to compete in round three are Allie Cloyd, Juan Garcia and Victoria Jelks.

We will now begin our final round.

Please help me welcome to the stage.

Allie Cloyd.

The Paradox by Paul Laurence Dunbar.

I am the mother of sorrows.

I am the ender of grief.

I am the bud and the blossom.

I am the late falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet I am thy surf and thy king I cure the tears of the heartsick when I come near they shall sing white are my hands as a snow drop Swart are my fingers as clay dark is my frown as the midnight fair is my brow as the day battle and war are my minions doing my will as divine I am the calmer of passions Peace is a nursling of mine Speak to me gently or curse me Seek me or fly from my sight I am thy soul in the morning Thou art my slave in the night down to the grave Will I take the out from the noise of the strife Then shalt thou see me and know me death then no longer but life then shalt thou sing at my coming Kiss me with passionate breaths Clasp me and smile to have thought me aught save the foemen of death come to me, brother when weary come when thy lonely heart swells I'll guide thy footsteps and lead thee down where the dream woman dwells.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage.

Victoria Jelks.

Songs for the People by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Let Me Make the Songs for the People, songs for the old and young, songs that stir like a battle cry wherever they are, sung not for the clashing of sabers, for carnage, nor for strife, but songs to thrill the hearts of men with more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary amid life's fever and fret till hearts shall relax their tension and careworn brows forget Let me sing for little children before their footsteps Stray sweet anthems of love and, duty to float oer lifes highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged when shadows dimmed their sight of the bright and restful mansions where they shall be no night our world so worn and weary, needs music pure and strong to hush the jangle and discords of sorrow, pain and wrong music to soothe all its sorrow Till war and crime shall cease And the hearts of men grown tender girdle the world with peace.

Please help me.

Welcome to the stage.

Juan Garcia Threshold by Maggie Smith.

He wants a door you can be on both sides of at once.

You want to be on both sides of here and there.

Now and then together and what did we call the life we would wish back?

The old life the before alone.

But any open space may be a threshold an arch of entering and leaving and crossing a field, wading through nothing but Timothy Grass.

Imagine yourself passing from and into passing through doorway after doorway after doorway.

As the 2023 Kansas Poetry Out Loud Champion, the state champion will receive $200 and the opportunity to compete in the National Poetry out loud contest.

This student's school also receives $500 to purchase poetry resources for their school library.

Should the Kansas State winner be unable to participate in the National Poetry Out Loud finals, the runner up will represent Kansas at the National Competition.

The runner up will also receive $100 and their school will also receive $200 for poetry materials.

The person receiving third place in the 2023 Kansas Poetry Out Loud competition is Allie Cloyd.

The second place runner up for 2023 Kansas Poetry Out Loud is Juan Garcia.

The 2023 Kansas Poetry Out Loud champion is Victoria Jelks.

Congratulations and thanks to all the students, judges, regional coordinators, parents, teachers and our special guests for attending the Kansas Poetry Out Loud State Finals.

Remember that you can watch our state champion represent Kansas at the National Semifinals at arts.gov on May 9th