Poet Robert Frost once said, “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
Thoughts and words will be center stage on Jan. 22, 2017, when the College of Charleston hosts the South Carolina Region 3 Finals of the Poetry Out Loud competition. Ten high school students from several Charleston area schools will recite poems ranging from authors such as William Shakespeare to Maya Angelou in the hopes of advancing to the South Carolina Poetry Out Loud finals in March 2017 and the national finals in April 2017.
The competition will be held in the College’s Stern Center Ballroom starting at 1:30 p.m.
South Carolina’s Region 3 competition is hosted by the College of Charleston Department of English and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, assisted by members of The Lowcountry Initiative for the Literary Arts. College of Charleston creative writing students will read selections from their own poetry during the event. American Sign Language interpreters will translate poems as they are read and recited.
Contest judges are College of Charleston English professors Emily Rosko and Jonathan Heinen.
All students in this competition have already won school-wide Poetry Out Loud contests at the following schools: Academy for the Arts, Science, and Technology; Ashley Hall School; Atheneum; Bishop England High School; Carver’s Bay High School; Charleston County School of the Arts; First Baptist Church High School; Goose Creek High School; Hilton Head Preparatory School; and Scholars Academy.
This competition, presented in partnership with the South Carolina Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation, is part of a national program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance and competition.
For more information, contact Cathy Holmes or Shannon Haas.
