- Hi everyone, I'm David Toland and I'm honored to serve as the lieutenant governor of the great state of Kansas alongside Governor Laura Kelly.

It's my pleasure to welcome you to the 2024 Kansas State Finals of the Poetry Out Loud Competition.

Every year our state's arts agency, the Kansas Arts Commission, partners with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation to promote the study of exceptional poetry in our schools.

The poetry recitations you're about to see and hear will demonstrate countless hours of hard work by some of our state's.

Most talented young people, we are proud to share their impressive and moving performances, and even though it's a competition with only one champion, I think you'll all agree that they are all winners.

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

We hope you enjoy Poetry Out Loud.

- This program on KTWU is sponsored by Ann and Ray Goldsmith Supporting excellence through lifelong learning that benefits our community, bringing growth and beauty to our lives.

- Ben and Judy Coates proudly support KTWU and Arts education.

♪ Music ♪ - Welcome to the 2024 Kansas Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

I am your host, Tracy Brimhall, 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.

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 Curtis Young, director of the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission and State Poetry Out Loud Coordinator Cheryl Germann.

- For 18 years, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with state arts agencies across the country to sponsor Poetry Out Loud a national recitation contest.

The Kansas Creative Arts Industry's commission is proud to provide the 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 hard work these students put in to get here today.

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

Each high school can send one representative to their areas regional competition where the number of competitors determines how many advance to the state finals.

This year, six students will compete to become the 2024 Kansas Poetry Out Loud champion and represent our state in the national finals.

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

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 Poet's Prize.

Mercedes Lucero is an Afro Latinx writer and the author of Stereometry.

Another New Calligraphy press 2018.

They're the winner of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for poetry and a finalist for the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for poetry.

Laura Lorson is a news editor, writer, host, and radio producer for Kansas Public Radio in Lawrence.

She is the host of the local broadcast of the NPR News magazine All Things Considered and is a contributor to KPR, NPR, the BBC and the CBC.

Huascar Medina is the lit editor for 785 Magazine, a staff editor at South Broadway Press and an op-ed writer for Kansas Reflector.

He is Kansas' first Latino poet laureate emeritus and an AcademyofAmerican poets Laureate fellow.

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, 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, micro film, 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 and 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 have included 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 student should identify the title of the poem and the author only.

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 will be 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 presentations, 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.

Our first contestant is Allie Cloyd.

I'm Allie Cloyd I'm a senior from Manhattan High School in Manhattan, Kansas.

This is my third year in Poetry Out Loud and it's been great.

It's always a lot of fun.

I have just really enjoyed increasing my exposure to poetry and all different kinds of poetry and poets that I would've never heard of otherwise.

So been a really great learning opportunity and just a lot of fun too.

Amor Mundi by Christina Rosetti.

Oh, where are you going with your love-locks flowing on the west, wind blowing along this valley track.

The downhill path is easy come with me and it please ye We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.

So they too went together in glowing August weather the honey breathing heather laid to their left and right and dear she was to dote on her swift feet seemed to float on the air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.

Oh, what is that in heaven where Gray cloud flakes are seven, where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt.

Oh, that's a meteor sent us a message dumb portentous, an undecided solemn signal of help or hurt.

Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly, their scent comes rich and sickly A scaled and hooded worm.

Oh, what's that in the hollow?

So pale I quake to follow.

Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term.

Turn again.

Oh my sweetest turn again false and fleetest this beaten wave thou beatest I fear is hells own track Nay too steep for hill mounting nay too late for cost counting.

This downhill path is easy but there's no turning back.

- Our next contestant is Anna Wendling.

- My name is Anna Wendling and I am a junior at Jefferson County North High School and I live in Nortonville, Kansas.

This is my first year competing at Poetry Out Loud and I'm really happy to be giving this a chance.

A Poison tree by William Blake.

I was angry with my friend I told my wrath my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe I told it not.

My wrath did grow and I watered it in fears night and morning with my tears.

I sunned it with smiles with soft deceitful whiles and it grew both day and night until it bore an apple bright.

My foe beheld it shine and he knew that it was mine and into my garden stole when the night had veiled the pole and in the morning glad I see my foe outstretched beneath the tree.

- Our next contestant is Elena Martinez.

- My name's Elena Martinez.

I am a senior at Olathe North High School and I'm from Olathe.

Last year I participated at the school event and then I wasn't able to get past that first round and then this year I was able to go out and kind of put on a better performance.

I feel like I secured a little bit more confidence in myself and I was really able to just go out there this year and it was really a an amazing experience Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation.

By Natalie Diaz.

Angels don't come to the reservation.

Bats maybe or owls boxy motteled things.

Coyotes too.

They all mean the same thing.

Death, and death eats angels I guess because I haven't seen an angel fly through this valley ever.

Gabriel?

Never heard of him.

Know a guy named Gabe though he came through here, one powwow and stayed typical Indian.

Sure he had wings, jailbird that he was.

He flies around in stolen cars.

Wherever he stops kids grow like gourds from women's bellies.

Like I said, no Indian I've ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.

Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something.

Nazarene church holds one every December organized by Pastor John's wife.

It's no wonder Pastor John's son is the angel.

Everyone knows angels are white.

Quit bothering with angels I say.

They're no good for Indians.

Remember what happened last time?

Some white God came floating across the ocean.

Truth is there may be angels, but if there are angels up there living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups, were better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and exactly where they are in their own distant heavens.

You better hope you never see angels on the rez.

If you do, they'll be marching off to Zion or Oklahoma or some other hell they've mapped out for us.

- Our next contestant is Brooks Baczkowski.

- Hi, I am Brooks Baczkowski.

I'm a senior from Hays High School in Hays.

I'm so excited to join you today.

I've been a participant since my freshman year when I went to my regional event for the first time and I've gone every year since.

This year, I am excited to join you here.

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire, but if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate to say that for destruction Ice is also great and would suffice.

- Our next contestant is Victoria Jelks.

- My name is Victoria Jelks.

I am a sophomore at Horton High School and I'm from Horton, Kansas.

Last year was my first year competing and it was a great experience getting to know different people that have the same interests.

It was incredible and then I made it onto nationals and went to DC and just the whole environment was amazing.

Let the light enter by Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, The Dying Words of Goethe.

Light, more light.

The shadows deepen and my life is ebbing low.

Throw the windows widely open, light more light before I go.

Softly let the balmy sunshine play around my dying bed.

Ever the dimly lighted valley I with lonely feet must tread.

Light.

More light.

For death is weaving shadows around my waning sight And I fain would gaze upon him hrough a stream of earthly light.

Not for greater gifts of genius not for thoughts more grandly bright.

All the dying poet whispers is a prayer for light, more light.

Heeds he not the gathered laurels fading from his sight.

All the poets aspirations center in that prayer for light Gracious savior when life's daydreams, melt and vanish from the sight.

May our dim and longing vision then be blessed with light, more light.

- Our next contestant is Seth Wilson.

- Well, hi, I'm Seth Wilson.

I'm a sophomore from Gerard High School.

This is actually my first year competing with poetry out loud.

However, in the past I have done multiple speaking events and I sought out poetry out loud because it would be a new speaking experience.

Ant by Matthew Francis All afternoon.

A reddish trickle out of the roots of the beech and across the lawn, a sort of rust that shines and dances.

Close up it proves to be, ant.

Each droplet a horned traveler finicking its way around the crooked geometry of a grass forest.

A finger felled in their path, rocks them, amazed back on their hunches.

I see them tasting the air for subtle intelligence till one ventures to scale it and others follow.

They are fidgety subjects to draw.

If you sink the feet in glue the rest twists and writhes; Kill one.

The juices evaporate in seconds, leaving only the shriveled casing.

I dunked one in brandy.

It struggled till the air rose from its mouth in pin prick bubbles.

I let it soak an hour then dried it, observed the spherical head, the hairlike feelers, the grinning vice of its sideways jaw.

The coppery armor plate with its scattered spines.

Some draft stirred it, then it rose to all its feet and set off across the rough miles of desk.

- We will now begin the recitations for round two.

Our first contestant is Allie Cloyd.

- They are hostile nations by Margaret Atwood.

One.

In view of the fading animals, the proliferation of sewers and fears The sea clogging the air nearing extinction We should be kind.

We should take warning We should forgive each other Instead, we are opposite.

We touch as though attacking the gifts we bring even in good faith, Maybe warp in our hands to implements, to maneuvers Two.

Put down the target of me you guard inside your binoculars In turn I will surrender this aerial photograph your vulnerable sections marked in red I have found so useful.

See, we are alone in the dormant field The snow that cannot be eaten or captured.

Three.

Here, there are no armies.

Here there is no money.

It is cold and getting colder.

We need each other's breathing warmth.

Surviving is the only war we can afford.

Stay walking with me.

There is almost time if we can only make it as far as the possibly last summer.

- Our next contestant is Anna Wendling - Listening in Deep Space by Diane Thiel.

We've always been out looking for answers, telling stories about ourselves, searching for connections.

Choosing to send out Stravinsky and whale song, which in translation might very well be our undoing instead of a welcome.

We launch satellites, probes, telescopes unfolding like origami.

Navigating geomagnetic storms major disruptions, rovers with spirit, perseverance, mapping the unknown.

We listen through large arrays, adjusted eagerly to hear the news that we are not alone.

Considering the history at home in houses, cross continents, oceans even inquests, armed with good intentions, what one's seeker has done to another.

What will we do when we find each other?

- Our next contestant is Elena Martinez.

- End of summer by Stanley Kunitz.

An agitation of the air, a perturbation of the light admonished me the unloved year would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted fields amid the stubble and the stones amazed while a small worm lisped to me the song of my marrow bones.

Blue poured into summer blue.

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower.

The roof of the silo blazed and I knew that part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north clangs open birds leaves, snows order their populations forth and a cruel wind blows.

- Our next contestant is Brooks Baczkowski, - Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain and back in rain.

I have out walked the furthest city light I have.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of defeat when far away an interrupted cry came over houses from another street not to call me back or say goodbye and further still at an unearthly height, one luminary clock against the sky proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

- Our next contestant is Victoria Jelks.

- We wear the mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

- We - Wear the mask that grins and lies.

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

This debt we pay to human guile with torn and bleeding hearts.

We smile and mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over wise and counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay.

Let them only see us while we wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh, the clay is vile beneath our feet and long the mile, but let the world dream otherwise.

We wear the mask.

- Our next contestant is Seth Wilson.

- We're human beings by Jill McDonough.

That's why we're here said Julio Lugo to the Globe.

Sox fans booed poor Lugo.

Booed is at bat after he dropped the ball in the pivotal fifth.

That ball I got to it.

I just couldn't come up with it.

Lugo wants you to know he's fast.

A slower player wouldn't even get close enough to get booed.

Lugo wants you to know he's only human.

We're human beings.

That's why we're here.

If not, I would have wings.

I'd be beside God right now.

I'd be an angel, but I'm not an angel.

I'm a human being that lives right here.

Next day all is forgiven.

Lugo's home run.

Lugo's sweet comment to the press.

I wanted to make a poster like the ones that say it's my birthday or first time at Fenway or pathetic.

ESPN.

Poster board permanent marker to say Lugo, me too.

I'm a human being that lives right here.

Decided it's too esoteric.

Too ephemeral a reference, but it's true.

Oh, Lugo Julio Lugo.

I'm here with you.

- While we allow time for tabulation of scores, let's hear from each of our judges.

Our first judge to share work is Eric McHenry.

- Yeah, I'm, I'm gonna pretend I'm a young poet by reading one off my phone.

I wrote this poem last year while I was sort of obsessively listening to Jim Jackson's Kansas City Blues, and if you don't know that song, I commend it to all of you.

It's an amazing song recorded in 1928.

It was a big hit at the time, but I think a memory of it has been sort of supplanted by a song that it inspired, which is Leiber and Stoller's, Kansas City.

I'm going to Kansas City that you might all have heard.

So I was so obsessed with this song that I really wanted to have written it and so I decided to write some additional verses to it.

So this is some new verses to Jim Jackson's, Kansas City Blues.

It's basically blues fan fiction.

I woke up this evening, didn't know where I was.

No acorns on my rooftop.

No cicada buzz.

I'm gonna move to Kansas City as one does.

Talk about your bad luck.

I don't know what you mean.

I bought a pair of weighted dice and shot 13.

I'm gonna move to Kansas City, keep a quarter acre green.

I asked Ed what he feared the most about going back to Brunswick.

He said one particular ghost.

He ought to move to Kansas City, stay off that haunted coast.

I've had the coffee in Texas, the tea in Tennessee.

I went back to Topeka and started asking after me.

They said I'd moved to Kansas City and I ought to let me be.

I've got possums out my window.

People in my affairs, if they keep on minding my business, I might have to mind theirs.

I'm gonna move to Kansas City, see if anybody cares.

The Missouri River is neither deep nor wide.

I can see my great-grandmother standing on the other side.

She must have moved to Kansas City where the steamers still glide.

It's a damn big country and it's mostly open space.

But if I take one step sideways, another man takes my place.

I'm gonna move to Kansas City, get out of everybody's face.

I went up to New York City sign, said closed.

When they run me out of this town, I'll be running unopposed.

I'm gonna move to Kansas City.

See how that goes.

I've lived in Walkups and lockups.

Nothing left to prove.

Some people keep on moving just to see themselves move.

They ought to move to Lagunitas, Luckenbach or Lvov.

They ought to move to Kansas City.

Relearn how to love.

I'm gonna tell all you Topekans what you mustn't do.

Don't ever love a river, like a river loves you.

She'll hold you in her arms, she'll sing to you real nice.

Then she'll break your local heart like she broke the levee twice and she'll move to Kansas City because you didn't take my advice.

My mom told me, my dad told me too.

If you live in Kansas City, there's nothing you can't do except move to Kansas City.

So you better think it through.

- Thanks.

Our next judge to share work is Wasco Medina.

- This poem is called New American.

Don't call me immigrant.

I'm a New American, striving in New America.

As a New American, I'm not your invader, not an animal nor criminal.

I'm a just person.

Just striving in a New America.

In New America, I'm a full-time student, overtime worker, volunteering in my free time.

If I plan enough ahead for free time, if I can even afford the free time.

If my free time is approved, I work hard in New America.

Third shift warehouse, second shift my house, always on call, no days off.

Freelance for life.

Four jobs a week.

Blue and white collar.

Don't call me immigrant.

I'm the New American surviving in New America.

As a New American, I am not your invader, not an animal Nor criminal, I'm a just person.

Just surviving in New America.

This is New America.

Student loans for all.

High rent, higher utilities, low pay, rising healthcare costs.

The cost of living deadly, no living wage, living enraged.

My cousins encaged for wanting to live in a safer part of New America.

Don't call me immigrant.

I'm the New American living in New America as a New American.

I'm not your invader not an animal nor criminal.

I'm a just person.

Just living in a New America.

Strong and proud, able to withstand the distance I have traveled.

The distance from my family, the distance between us, the distance of our dialects, the distance in our churches, the distance in our homes, the distance between my ancestors and my grandchildren.

The distance from the field to the corner office suite.

Don't call me immigrant.

I'm the New American dreaming of New America.

As a New American, I am not your invader, not an animal nor criminal.

I am a just person, just dreaming of a New America.

Old America, don't be afraid.

We are all America, North America, Central America, South America, we are all Americans.

We all strive in Americas, we all survive In Americas, we all live in Americas, they are all the same America.

We all dream of a greater America.

I want you to be paid a living wage, live in affordable housing without college debt or medical debt or credit card debt or national debt.

I want no more racism.

I'm speaking of a New America.

I am part of a New America whether you like it or not.

So join me please.

- Our next judge to share a poem is Mercedes Lucero.

- Congratulations orators.

Y'all are incredible.

So I'm gonna read a short poem from my book, Stereometry.

The title is How Much Cosmic Occurrence Befalls Upon The Universe.

My Solace is always in thinking of bodies in space of your body moving through and taking up a moment and moments in time in spatial universe, a global geometric wonder.

Here you are now drawing in breath, tucking your hair to one side, bringing your knees together while you sit, bringing your arms up to close curtains, cook dinner here is your body is swaying through space into kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.

At this moment I am filled with admiration for this cosmic occurrence thinking how much fortune befalls upon each of those spaces.

Here I am growing, excited again, building myself an equation and equations to calculate and imagine the places you are and are now and are now.

Thank you.

- Our next judge to share a poem is Laura Lorson.

- See, since I'm not actually a poet, I brought a poem to read.

But before I do that, I just wanna take a moment to thank the teachers who are involved in this.

It takes so much to stand firm and say, I believe kids, anyone has the right to experience poetry.

I wanna teach you how to enjoy this.

I wanna teach you to experience this.

I wanna teach you to find your own voice and do it yourself, and I just have so much respect for that.

So thank you to the teachers, to the parents, to the friends who have helped these young people do this incredible work.

We've seen such great work here today and I just feel like people don't say thank you enough.

So teachers, friends, parents, thank you, thank you.

Now, I did not write this poem because I don't write poetry unless you consider say weather announcements and such being poetry, which some, some people do.

But I am going to read a poem by one of the poets from a timeframe that I really like.

If he's an American poet, it's Howard Nemerov.

This poem is called Magnitudes.

You will probably see why I thought of it because I do news editing and writing.

Magnitudes by Howard Nemerov.

Earth's wrath at our assaults is slow to come, but is relentless when it does.

It has to do with catastrophic change and with the limit at which one order more of magnitude will bring us to a qualitative change and disasters drastically different from those we daily have to know about.

As with the speed of light where speed itself becomes a limit and an absolute as with the splitting of the atom and a little later of the nucleus as with the millions rising into billions, the pikers kind in terms of money, yes, but in a million squared of terms of time and space, as the universe grew vast while the earth, our habitat diminished to the size of a billiard ball, both relative to the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves, the doubling numbers the earth could accommodate.

We stand now in the place and limit of time where hardest knowledge is turning into dream and nightmares still contained in sleeping dark seem on the point of bringing in today the sweating panic that starts the sleeper up.

One on another nightmare may come true and what to do then what in the world to do.

- Thank you.

- The three contestants with the highest combined scores from round one and two will advance to compete in round three.

Those students are Allie Cloyd, Victoria Jelks and Seth Wilson.

Congratulations on moving on to the final rounds.

Our first contestant is Allie Cloyd - The bookshelf of the God of infinite Space by Jeffrey Skinner.

You would expect an uncountable number acres and acres of books in rows like wheat or gold bullon or that the words just appear in the mind like banner headlines.

In fact, there is one shelf holding a modest number 10 or 12 volumes, no dust jackets because no dust.

Covers made of gold or skin or golden skin or creosote or rain soaked macadam or some mix of salt and glass.

You turn a page and mountains rise clouds drawn by children bubble in the sky.

You are 20 again trying to read a map, dissolving in your hands.

I say you and mean me.

Say God and mean librarian, who after long research offers you a glass of water and an apple.

You grateful to discover your name, A footnote in that book.

- Our next contestant is Seth Wilson, - The arrow and the song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth.

I knew not where.

For so swiftly it flew.

The site could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed the song into the air, it fell to earth I knew not wear for who has sights so keen and strong that it can follow the flight of song.

Long, long afterward in an oak I found the arrow still unbroke and the song from beginning to end I found again in the heart of a friend.

- Our next contestant is Victoria Jelks.

- The season of Phantasmal Peace by Derek Walcott.

Then all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues, stitching and crossing it.

They lifted up the shadows of long pines down trackless slopes, the shadows of glass face towers down evening streets.

The shadow of a frail plant on a city sill the net rising soundless as night the birds' cries soundless until there was no longer dusk or season decline or weather.

Only this passage of phantasmal light that not the narrowest shadow dared to sever.

And men could not see, looking up what the wild geese drew, what the osprey trailed behind them in silvery ropes that flashed in the icy sunlight.

They could not hear battalions of starlings waging peaceful cries bearing the net higher covering this world like the vines of an orchard or a mother drawing the trembling gauze over the trembling eyes of a child fluttering to sleep.

It was the light you will see at evening on the side of a hill in yellow October, and no one hearing knew what change had brought into the raven's cawing the killdeer's screech, tthe ember-circling chough such an immense soundless and high concern for the fields and cities where the birds belong except it was their seasonal passing love made seasonless or from the high privilege of their birth, something brighter than pity for the wingless ones below them who shared dark holes in windows and in houses.

And higher They lifted the net above all change betrayals of falling suns.

And this season lasted one moment like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace.

But for such as our earth is now, it lasted long.

- While we allow time for tabulation of scores, let's take a moment to meet some of our contestants.

- My first poem is Amor Mundi by Christina Rosetti.

The second one is They Are Hostile Nations by Margaret Atwood and the third is the Bookshelf of the God of Infinite Space by Jeffrey Skinner.

All the poems are a lot of fun.

I like to joke with my coach and say, I picked poems about love, war, and God, what else is there?

- I chose Let the Light Enter by Francis Ellen Watkins Harper because it really signifies the importance of life.

When we get to the final days of our life, we may not have noticed some of the little things that make life so significant.

So in this poem, it really talks about light just being a miracle and how the miracle of life is a beautiful thing.

The second poem that I chose was We Wear The Mask by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

It talks about how we mask ourselves in times when we need to reach out to someone.

It was also written at a time where slavery was very common and so slaves had to, you know, appear happy or didn't show much emotion, but they were being tortured inside.

So that's one of the main points of that poem, which I love.

And then my final poem was the Season of Phantasmal Peace by Derek Walcott.

And it talks about peace being spread nationwide through birds.

We don't recognize how beautiful birds are as much as we should, and it just reaches out to all parts of just everyone lifting up the shadows, as it says, of this world, which is the burdens, basically, and just paying attention to the beauty of nature.

- So I chose three poems today Ant by Matthew Francism We're Human beings by Joe McDonough and The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

And I chose these poems just because they really stood out to me amongst the ones that I was looking for and they connected with me more than the others.

- It is kind of exactly that, peeling back the layers of a poem experience that makes poetry special to me, especially when I get to do it in a setting like this.

There's something so cool about finally getting a poem and I sort of had that moment with my second poem, the Margaret Atwood one, They Are Hostile Nations.

I did not understand it very well at all when I first read it, but I still really liked it.

And then as I thought about it and talked about it and I had this moment of like, oh, that line makes sense now.

And that's such a cool feeling.

- Poetry is historical, it is visionary, and it is a way to interpret love.

I have all my life been surrounded by music and religion and before I wouldn't have classified those things as poetic.

But now looking back, for example, the Bible is very important to my family, which is a very beautiful and poetic example of language.

So from my life dating back to when I was born to now, it has encouraged me to see the beauty and easily fall in love with poetry and its language all in all.

- Well, I like to consider myself a musician.

I've always loved music and I kind of see poetry as music without music.

It's another way that you can express yourself and another way you can express your opinions and views and how you feel.

- I would encourage everybody to give poetry a chance.

It's not easy to recognize the value in poetry when you're a student because maybe there's not a lot of it that you quite relate to yet, but finding the poems that you do relate to and that you do think are really cool, really makes poetry so much more special.

- I would definitely encourage poetry for anyone.

Poetry is often looked over.

It is not, you know, like sports, they're usually more appreciated by our nation.

But poetry is, I believe can be for everyone.

You just have to dig in and give it some time and you'll see the beauty of it.

- Absolutely.

I feel like in everyone's lives they should try poetry or some other type of speaking event at least once and just see if they connect with it, how good they're at it, and if they can improve at it in the future.

- The 2024 Kansas Poetry Out Loud 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 at Loud finals, the runner up will represent Kansas at the national competition.

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

The person receiving third place in the 2024 Kansas Poetry Out Loud competition is Allie Cloyd.

The second place runner up for 2024 Kansas Poetry Out loud is Seth Wilson.

The 2024 Kansas Poetry Out Loud Champion is Victoria Jelks.

Congratulations and thanks to all 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 1st.

- This program on KTWU is sponsored by Ann and Ray Goldsmith, supporting Excellence through lifelong learning that benefits our community, bringing growth and beauty to our lives.

- Ben and Judy Coates proudly support KTWU and Arts Education.